Qatar World Cup semi-final battle is in full swing, but the Asian teams are once again not with the top four. Whenever fans feel sorry or tease Japan and South Korea for their early exit, they can't help but think of the national soccer team in their minds.
Since the fall of 2021, Chinese soccer, which is closely linked to the Chinese Super League soccer clubs, is undergoing a profound change as the real estate sector, the main gold owner of the clubs, declines.
Among the 16 teams in the Chinese Super League, only clubs dominated by state-owned enterprises, such as Shanghai Port and Shandong Taishan, are operating smoothly, while other clubs are experiencing tight financial chains and even wage arrears.
Looking back at the past decade, it has become a common strategy for clubs to enter the soccer circle with money and venues, and to recruit Chinese and foreign players and coaches in a big way in order to expand their influence in the shortest possible time.
However, now real estate developers are generally in trouble, Chinese soccer for more than a decade of the "golden dollar era" finally came to an end, the former glory seems to instantly turn into a bubble.
The Rise and Fall of Golden Dollar Football
For a long time, the national football team and real estate developers, two groups closely bound by the soccer club, have complex and contradictory emotions in the minds of Chinese people.
Between 2010 and 2020, 15 of the 16 teams in the Chinese Super League have shareholders who are real estate companies, such as Guangzhou Evergrande, Greenland Shenhua, Henan Jianye, Wanda Dalianren, Fuli Guangzhou City, and Huaxia Happy Hebei.
These real estate companies and the national football team have achieved each other and become an inseparable part of the memory of a generation of fans.
For example, Henan Jianye has been investing in and loving its soccer team for nearly 30 years since it decided to invest in the real estate industry in 1994.
Guangzhou Evergrande since the acquisition of Guangzhou Football Club in 2010, Xu Jiayin invested about 15 billion yuan in more than a decade, sparing no expense to build the "dream team".
Despite many controversies, Guangzhou Evergrande's two AFC Champions League titles are inextricably linked to the strong capital support behind them.
As a matter of fact, real estate companies are keen on soccer, not only because of the boss's personal hobby, but also because of the commercial value of soccer itself.
As a strong catalyst for brand communication, the commercial value of world-class tournaments such as the World Cup and UEFA Champions League has never been underestimated.
The sponsorship of the Chinese Super League, AFC Champions League and other competitions is of great significance for Chinese companies to showcase their brand image, enhance their visibility and space for future development.
Especially around 2010, the rapid rise of domestic real estate, local real estate enterprises are facing huge local competitive pressure, but also in the local development of the bottleneck, eager for national expansion.
For example, Evergrande is even willing to pay liquidated damages to privately replace the chest advertising space; previously, it also offered 8 million yuan to buy back the chest advertisement of a game to promote "Evergrande Grain and Oil".
Gone are the days of losing money to make money.
Today, the real estate tycoons who support half of the Chinese Super League feel lonely. With the exception of Wang Jianlin's Wanda, most of the other real estate companies no longer have time for soccer.
According to Xinhua News Agency, on February 16 this year, Guangzhou Evergrande announced a collective pay cut for its players, with the main players taking a pay cut of nearly 90%. At the same time, five highly paid naturalized players terminated their contracts.
Hui had planned to realize his dream in 2022 by investing billions to build the world's No. 1 stadium and make his players' World Cup dreams come true.
However, today everything falls through. Evergrande's soccer stadium is being sold, investments are being shifted to urban investments, and a large number of naturalized players have had their contracts terminated en masse.
When Evergrande's crisis continues to ferment, real estate companies have been defaulting on their loans, and the main team has also staged a "salary" action.
Soccer Daily bluntly stated that "wage arrears have become a core conflict in Chinese soccer."
On Nov. 23, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) publicly released a penalty notice in which six league points were deducted from many teams that owed wages, including Chinese Super League (CSL) teams Shanghai Shenhua, Wuhan Changjiang and Hebei.
Moreover, even if the "Wanda Cultural Tourism" appeared in the World Cup as usual, it was just a "beautiful misunderstanding", not from the heart.
In 2011, Wang sold 91% of 13 cultural and tourism projects to Sunac for 43.844 billion yuan and 77 hotels to Fortune for 19.906 billion yuan.
The 63.75 billion yuan deal became the largest M&A transaction in the history of China's real estate industry.
Today, most of Wanda's cultural and tourism projects have been dispersed in the hands of other unrelated companies such as Sunac, and Wanda's business focuses on light assets such as commercial real estate operations.
However, until March 2016, Wanda had a 15-year contract with FIFA, which meant it had the rights to FIFA's top sponsorship from 2016 to 2030.
For 15 years, Wanda has bid well.
At this year's World Cup in Qatar, Chinese companies became the biggest sponsors of the World Cup, sponsoring $1.395 billion, more than $1.1 billion, according to British data firm globaldata.
Among them, Wanda Group is expected to invest $850 million (about 6 billion yuan) over 15 years for the World Cup, sponsoring the next four World Cups with an average of more than $200 million per sponsorship.
there are no rivers one who has crossed the ocean
Currently, the two Guangzhou real estate companies clubs, R&F Tension and Evergrande Hui Ka Yan are facing very different choices: R&F may completely withdraw from the operation of Guangzhou, while Evergrande decided to continue to operate the club alone.
Evergrande led the gold dollar soccer, and now have to choose to use "diving type" low salary to deal with the new season, 15 million yuan of operating costs are not all used for the first team, including soccer school training.
The Hebei team was once a participant in the golden dollar soccer. Former superstar Lavezzi was still reminiscing about the good old days of Hebei Huaxia recently.
I didn't realize that the team that paid him handsomely had been hanging on for two seasons in limbo and still hadn't waited for stock reform.
Earlier, it was revealed that Rivera was unable to pay its utility bills and decided to stop work and take a vacation.
All employees shared that they would work for free.
It's a bit sad that they are currently planning to gather 11 players at low cost for the CFL.
According to relevant media reports, Shanghai Shenhua, invested by Greenland Group, also has a lot of salary arrears, and the team has already started winter training under the guidance of Wu Jingui.
The club also wants to reduce the weight of the team and the salaries of the players through equal dialog and negotiations, but progress is slow.
If internal load shedding is not accomplished, the club is likely to go into the 2022 season with an all-Chinese squad and not be able to bring in foreign aid.
Several other real estate company clubs are also changing.
For example, the Shenzhen team, which owes wages, ended its training in Hainan early, publicly because of Li Zhangzhu's devilish training and players' self-reported injuries, but the players also had the intention of claiming their wages.
In fact, in addition to Henan Songshan Longmen has completed the stock reform, Beijing Guoan should be the other real estate companies music department is the most calm, although there are also arrears of wages, but the music department early to determine the head coach, and began to sign the work, as can be seen from the rental of Memisevic, Guoan signing standards are not high, and the new season greatly reduces the expenditure.
While Guangzhou and a number of other soccer teams have recently formalized several partnerships, sponsorship revenues still do not allow for strong support from clubs.
Share reform could be a way out and most clubs are looking to put it on state-owned enterprises and local authorities.
Unfortunately, only Shandong Taishan and Henan Songshan Longmen have been relatively successful in their shareholding reforms, while other clubs have been slow in their reform process.
Some industry insiders told the Observer that even these out-of-town stock reform teams, such as the Chongqing team that introduced Chongqing's new national district of Liangjiang and the Henan team that took the opportunity to introduce the local governments of Zhengzhou and Luoyang, are almost always just written reforms, and the funds are not yet fully in place.
"Whenever Chinese soccer is criticized, we briefly focus on youth training." A soccer school practitioner said.
Youth training requires a long-term investment.
At present, the popularization of soccer and the tournament system in China are not really perfect and mature.
"At the moment, Chinese soccer clubs probably earn less than 10 percent of their expenses."
Although tied to real estate developers of Chinese soccer by countless fans of ridicule and criticism, but in the real estate developers fell that year, who would like to continue to come up with real money "take over" Chinese soccer, change the development model, change the development model, so that the club market benign operation.
