Exploring the competition pattern of the 2021 season of the Central League
The new season of the Central League will adopt a unique conference system and will be divided into four phases with 34 rounds of intense duels (10+8+8+8) to determine the winner.
In the first stage, three city clubs (Chengdu Rongcheng, Meizhou Hakka and Wuhan Sanzhen) will act as hosts. The three seeded teams were drawn to determine Groups A, B and C, while the remaining 15 teams were serpentine and directly assigned to the three groups based on their rankings for the 2020 season. Each group of six teams will play 10 rounds of double-round robin matches in the same region, totaling 90 exciting matches.
In the next phases 2 to 4, the teams' rankings will be rotated. Each stage is divided into three groups, with teams within the groups competing in a double round-robin, but no more face-offs between teams in the same group in the first stage. Eight rounds are played in each phase, totaling 72 matches.
Regarding the promotion places, there will be 2+0.5+0.5 in the Central League this season, which means that the top two teams will be promoted directly, while the third and fourth teams will play a play-off against the last two teams of the Chinese Super League, which will ultimately determine the expansion of the Chinese Super League in the 2022 season.
