If Shandong Taishan is flawless, it seems difficult for other teams to win. But is it really that simple? The answer may not be what you think.
In the "Golden Dollar Era" of soccer, Shandong Taishan did not have an advantage. At that time, financial strength was regarded as a symbol of strength. Although Shandong Taishan is not short of money, but a large amount of capital investment needs to go through a cumbersome review process, far less flexible than other teams. However, with the end of the "golden dollar era", the Super League transfer market bubble gradually burst. Under the implementation of a series of policies of the Football Association, Shandong Taishan's advantages are highlighted, and the value of players can return to the essence.
Usually, the strength of a team depends on the level of foreign aid. However, with the departure of high-level foreign aid, teams need to pursue cost-effectiveness, and the strength of domestic players has become a benchmark. When comparing the strength of domestic players, only three teams in the Chinese Super League stand out: Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Harbor, and Shandong Taishan with excellent youth training.
Guangzhou Evergrande's domestic players benefited from a golden age of capital investment. Boss Xu has included almost all the national team players including head coach Lippi. Do you think such a team would be poor? However, with the reduction of capital, Cannavaro led Evergrande's domestic players to draw a blank in 2019. The retreat of capital made Guangzhou Evergrande, which was gathered because of money, eventually fall apart, and even disbanded for a time and withdrew from the Chinese football world. Nowadays, although Guangzhou Evergrande has been reduced to China's first division, life is still difficult.
Next up is Shanghai Seaport. Shanghai's dominance among domestic players at the Harbour stems mainly from the excellent players at the Genbao base. Stanley Wang, Yan Junling and Wu Lei are examples (Genbao's youth training not only sends talents to Shanghai, but also develops them for Shanghai Shenhua). Shanghai Seaport's domestic players are strong, thanks to the strong background of a state-owned enterprise, which is not affected by the FA's policies. Whether it's the neutralization of the club's name or the reform of its shares, coupled with Chen Xuyuan's role as head of the Football Association, Shanghai Seaports still maintains a "buy-buy-buy" attitude while pursuing survival.
However, we have to face an embarrassing fact. Despite a strong squad, the first few seasons have not been played to the desired level. The main reason was the manager's lack of training ability.
When it comes to Shandong Taishan, in recent years, the team's key attraction lies in foreign aid, with fewer domestic players introduced. In previous seasons, including the Double Crown period, Shandong Taishan relied heavily on domestic players to achieve victories, and most of these players came from Luneng's youth training. It was only later that the team lacked quality domestic talent up front (Guo Tianyu was expected to be the new centerpiece, and was in poor shape after studying abroad for half a year), and had to rely on foreign aid. Before this season, the team brought in a large number of domestic players, but due to the "job search information" filling the desk, the new season has seen many mistakes.
Therefore, the question arises, as the two strongest teams in China at present, Shanghai Harbor and Shandong Taishan, who is better?
As it stands, Shandong Taishan is far behind Shanghai Seaport in the standings. Shanghai Seaport is undoubtedly the dominant and unique player in the league!
However, is the gap between Shandong Taishan and Shanghai Harbor really that big? We should not jump to conclusions. We should refer to the first meeting between the two teams this season and look for clues from it.
In the 14th round of the Chinese Super League, Shandong Taishan met Shanghai Harbor. As both teams had their own reasons, the domestic players were largely on top of their performance. Throughout the game, Shanghai Seaport had a slight advantage in possession, but Shandong Taishan had a higher number of threats and ability to seize opportunities in the first 30 meters than Shanghai Seaport. A statistic shows that Shandong Taishan's possession and threatening ball possession was very decentralized, with Liu Binbin, Chen Pu, Li Yuanyi, Fellaini, Moises and even wing-back Liu Yang all having direct or indirect opportunities to threaten the goal. In this regard, Shanghai Seaport seems to be slightly lacking.
From this, we can see that Shanghai Seaport is not as good as Shandong Taishan in the overall play of domestic players. In other words, if Oscar leaves, Shanghai Seaport's attacking power will undoubtedly drop to a higher level.
But why is Shanghai Harbor doing so much better than Shandong Taishan? Is it because one Oscar is better than all the players in Shandong Taishan? This is not the case, the main reason is that Shandong Taishan suffered too many twists and turns this season. Whether it's pre-season or post-season, Shandong Taishan's preparations and matches have been overwhelming. Head coaches Hao Wei and Fabio, including core Sun Junhao, have dragged down the entire Shandong Taishan team.
During that time, the Taishan team was in disarray, with insufficient pre-match preparation and lack of targeted training. When the game came, they could only deal with the predicament with the mentality of "soldiers blocking water and dirt". Naturally, the poor performance is reasonable.
However, the turning point came when Choi Kang-hee took over. The veteran is not a simple man, and it is not his tactics that are key, but his control of the team and targeted psychological counseling that has led to a rapid rejuvenation of the team.
During this period, although Shanghai Harbor has also made great strides, Shandong Taishan has performed equally well. The only chance of competition was a direct match between the two teams. However, due to the referee's controversial decision, Taishan finally gained three points.
Back on track, Shandong Taishan became incredibly scary. After Cui Kangxi took over, Taishan lost only one game on the road against Zhejiang. I'm sure those of you who watched the game know that the field conditions limited Taishan's chances and they ended up losing.
If Shandong Taishan can play normally, the three towns of Wuhan last season, basically no chance.
In the first season after promotion to the Super League, Wuhan Sanzhen created the Kaiserslautern myth on Shandong Taishan, but did Wuhan Sanzhen really play well?
Perhaps, at least better than other teams. But compared to Shandong Taishan, it's still slightly worse.
There is a reason why I say this. You can think about it for a moment. From the first game of last season, Taishan suffered serious injuries. Fellaini missed many games and Zheng Zheng was suspended by the FA. Then, Taishan started a nightmare season journey. The entire starting lineup was injured, and Son Junho was transferred to the Korean national team for the World Cup. At the critical moment, the FA stopped two to five matches for various reasons, directly destroying Shandong Taishan's hopes of chasing points.
Until the last round of the league, Shandong Taishan collected their strongest lineup and have been struggling with injuries and suspensions. Although they kept catching up in the end to equalize the points, they could only complete the defense of Wuhan Sanzhen's title against Shenhua due to a goal difference disadvantage.
If Shandong Taishan can get together the main lineup, then the final championship will not be behind. But after all, it has become a fact, and regret will not help. We can only focus on the present and look to the future.
It's not that we're deliberately touting Shandong Taishan, but in the current Chinese soccer environment, it's not easy for other teams to beat a healthy and stable Shandong Taishan. The only way to beat Shandong Taishan is for them to have internal problems, which allows their opponents to take advantage of them, at least for the time being.
