The 22nd round of the Chinese Super League war, Shanghai seaport's performance can be described as multi-faceted, jaw-dropping. A set of data can not help but ponder: the most penalty kicks in the Chinese Super League, but rarely see players injured. Do not beat around the bush, direct analysis.
It's easy to see from this chart that Shanghai Harbour leads the CPL penalty table with 5 penalties, up to 2 ahead of Cangzhou Second Lions. From the perspective of title contenders, among the second to sixth teams in the table, except for Chengdu Rongcheng, all other teams have more penalties than the two teams combined. In other words, Shanghai Seaport has 3 to 4 more penalties than all their title rivals. Even so, Wu Lei still craved a second penalty against Zhejiang.
The number of penalties is complemented by the ranking in the standings, with Shanghai Seaports leading the way. However, the team's "negative" stats have put Shanghai Harbour at the bottom of the Chinese Super League. Let's start with the red card statistics (below). Zhejiang tops the list with 7 red cards, Shanghai Seaport and Shandong Taishan are tied for second place, while Beijing Guoan and three other teams have received no cards.
Such a low number of red cards for Shanghai Seaport players is not proportional to their frequent tournament participation. It is well known that many star players of Chinese Super League teams have been injured in matches against Shanghai Seaport, such as Shenhua's core player Wu Xi, Guoan's Yang Liyu, Chengdu Rongcheng's core player Romulo, and Tianjin's goalkeeper player. What is even more worrying is that in the confrontation with these four rivals, Shanghai Seaport's main players did not have a single red card, and some of them did not even have a yellow card.
The referee chose to downgrade when confronted with foul play by Shanghai Harbour players, which is the main reason why they have fewer red and yellow cards than their competitors. For example, Li Shuai didn't even show a yellow card against Zhejiang's foreigner, and not only that, the referee also issued a yellow card to another player who complained. In this context, the referee even extended a "friendly hand" to Li Shuai.
When it comes to yellow cards (chart below), Shanghai Harbour leads the Chinese Super League with 27 yellow cards, 7 less than the bottom two Shenhua and Wuhan Sanzhen in the first 22 rounds. While Guoan has no red cards, they have a whopping 44 yellow cards, far more than Shanghai. Even more staggering is Henan, with 55 yellow cards more than twice as many as Shanghai.
If the number of red and yellow cards increases for each team, Shanghai Seaport will be expected to continue to lead the Chinese Super League. Some may question whether Shanghai Seaport's minimal number of red and yellow cards is due to the fact that the team plays clean and commits no fouls. Let's take another look at the fouls data (chart below). As you can see, Shanghai is ranked third from the bottom in terms of the number of fouls, Wuhan Sanzhen and Cangzhou Lions are ranked even lower, but they have more red and yellow cards than Shanghai.
Data speaks louder than words. Is your investment in Shanghai Seaport profitable? Shanghai Seaport fans may make excuses, but hard facts cannot be refuted. Data doesn't lie, the evidence is right in front of our eyes and cannot be disputed. If you don't accept it, it's just a cover-up.
