Back in December 1993, Qingdao Hainiu Football Club emerged as the first professional soccer team in Qingdao.
In the spring of 2005, Qingdao Zhongneng Group stepped forward and tied up with Qingdao Hainiu. In that year, a host of clubs such as Dalian Shide and Wuhan Yellow Hurricane withdrew, disbanded or merged, and the soccer world was in a state of flux.
In 2013, Qingdao Hainiu had no choice but to be relegated to the Chinese Super League after their financial chain broke. At the same time, clubs such as Guizhou Renhe and Shanghai Shenxin withdrew or disbanded one after another. Among the remaining 12 clubs, Guangzhou Evergrande and Guangzhou R&F fought hard for relegation.
In 2016, Qingdao Hainiu was relegated again. At that time, four of the top 16 clubs in the Chinese Super League had already quit or dissolved, including runners-up Jiangsu Suning and Chongqing Lifan. The likes of Guangzhou Evergrande and Guangzhou R&F were in relegation crisis. And in China's first division, nine teams, including Tianjin Quanjian and Guizhou Hengfeng, bid farewell to the professional league.
After Zhongneng Group's ownership, Qingdao Hainiu has become one of the few evergreens in the professional league after a solid run in the league. the first Chinese professional league kicked off in 1994, and today there are only eight teams left, including Guangzhou and Shanghai Shenhua. In nearly a decade of investment, Qingdao Hainiu has remained standing despite being a small and medium-sized club.
In the era of golden dollar soccer, Qingdao Hainiu held on to the top league for 18 years.In 2016, the team was relegated from Central League A to Central League B, but tenaciously survived. After years of hard work, Qingdao Hainiu has found a healthy way that suits them: reasonable investment and insistence on youth training. This season, the team's U19 and U21 ladder teams both achieved excellent results.
Qingdao Hainiu has become a model for small and medium-sized clubs in the Chinese professional league. If it can realize stable development, it will help to improve the overall level of the Chinese professional league. However, as a small and medium-sized club, how to survive in the top league still needs the attention of the community. How to provide support to Qingdao Hainiu and enhance its ability to withstand the storm has become an urgent task.
The ups and downs of Qingdao soccer in the professional league are closely related to the lack of substantial support for professional clubs in Qingdao. Over the years, support has mainly remained at the verbal and planning level, with a lack of substantial investment. Currently, Qingdao soccer has top clubs such as Qingdao Hainiu, but overall planning and support still needs to be strengthened. The development of professional soccer clubs cannot be separated from government support, but overall planning and substantial investment are more crucial. This is the unavoidable responsibility of Qingdao Soccer City and the reason why Qingdao ranks 13th in the GDP city grid.
