Recently, a heavy news has exploded in the soccer circle: Li Tenglong, a young player born in Russia, is about to join the Henan team of the Chinese Super League. His family background is quite complicated: his father is a Vietnamese businessman and his mother is from Shaanxi. Li Tenglong has chosen to play for China, a decision that has outraged the Vietnamese media. Henan's parent company, Jianye Group, is facing business difficulties and layoffs. This season, Henan is ranked 10th and the situation is not optimistic.
Li Tenglong was born in Moscow and underwent youth training at CSKA Moscow. With his outstanding performance, he was almost selected by the Russian national youth team. As his reputation grew, both Vietnam and the Chinese Football Association (CFA) took an interest in him. In the end, instead of choosing his father's Vietnam team, Li Tenglong moved to the Chinese qualifying club Llanada. This club was later purchased by Jiang Lizhang (former manager of Chongqing Swai) and owned by Wuhan Contemporary (former investor of Chongqing Swai). However, according to Western media reports, the team is likely to be bought by the US-based MSSG.
Vietnamese soccer is also actively bringing in naturalized players, even more so than the national soccer team. Dang Van Linh and Adriano Schmidt, who have both represented Vietnam in World Cup qualifiers, were also born in Russia. Vietnam's Hanoi Public Security Club has also recently brought in two goalkeepers, Philip Nguyen and Patrick Le Giang. Both players are European-born, mixed-race players, similar to Ly Teng Long.
At present, there are many domestic mixed-race players and naturalized players, such as Eddie, Qian Jie give, Jiang Guangtai, Li Ke and so on. Pure Chinese naturalized players include Wuhan Sanzhen Wang yii, Nantong Zhiyun's Yang Mingyang and so on. Naturalized or mixed-blood players from Hong Kong and Taiwan include An Yongjia, Wang Jianming, and Laureus. It has been a long time since Shen Zigui, Zhou Dingyang and Yin Yaji have represented Taiwan Province.
With no U22 rule restrictions, 22-year-old Li Tenglong may face a greater challenge to compete for a starting position when he joins the Chinese Super League this year. Fortunately, Henan has already survived the relegation crisis and is currently at a low risk of relegation with 15 points. Currently, the most crucial task for the team is not to train newcomers or replace foreign aid, but to complete the stock reform.
Li Tenglong is an Asian Games-age player, and his teammates include Tan Long, Barton, Fang Hao, Liu Ruofan and Liu Zhuyun. At the same time, he also qualifies as an Olympic-age player. Previously, the U22 national team played a warm-up match with Uzbekistan, and the strength gap between the two sides was obvious. Next year's U23 Asian Cup, a qualifier for the Paris Olympics, is a challenging road to advancement.
