As the new season approaches, Guangzhou Evergrande's discarded player Zhang Linyan has moved to the domestic women's soccer team Wuhan Chegu Jiangda Women's Soccer Team, where she scored six goals in the first ten rounds of matches and ranked second on the list of local scorers. The 21-year-old player has become a shining star in the soccer world.
In Europe, many soccer clubs have both men's and women's teams. One such team is the Swiss Grasshopper women's soccer team, which in the 21/22 season not only reached the semi-finals of the league playoffs, but also won second place in the Swiss Cup.
Facing the opportunity to join Grasshopper Women's Soccer, Zhang Linyan said, "I will cherish this opportunity to come to Switzerland to play soccer, train hard to improve my soccer skills, and deeply experience the European soccer culture and professional standards. I hope to grow through the loan period in Grasshopper Women's Football and make a greater contribution to our women's football in the future."
In December 2021, Swiss club Grasshopper brought in defender Li Lei from Beijing Guoan and paid him the team's highest salary of 300,000 euros per year. In addition, Shanghai Harbour's youngster Jia Bo Yan joined Grasshoppers through a transfer but was loaned out to Dubrava, Croatia, but is still stranded in Shanghai due to an epidemic and visa issues.
Injecting Local Power
Grasshoppers Zurich is a traditional Swiss powerhouse with a 135-year history and 27 local top flight titles. However, the team's performance has not been satisfactory in recent years. Nowadays, Grasshoppers are eager to bring in Chinese players, which is closely related to their Chinese capital background.
Grasshoppers Zurich, a Swiss Super League soccer club with a background of Chinese capital and investors, like Spaniard, where Wu Lei plays, has become the new majority shareholder on April 9, 2020, when Champion Union HK Holdings Limited acquired a 90% stake in the team from the club's former majority shareholders, Peter Stüber and Stephan Anliker, who acquired 90% of the team's shares from the club's former majority shareholders Peter Stüber and Stephan Anliker, to become the new majority shareholder.
The announcement mentions that Champions League (HK) Holdings Limited is owned by "Jenny Wang", who is the wife of Guo Guangchang, the owner of Fosun and Premier League Wolves, as mentioned in a report by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Wang Jinyuan. The 50-year-old Wang, a former Oriental TV host, is now the wife of Fosun chairman Guo Guangchang.
Premier League Wolverhampton Wanderers Satellite Partner
Overall, the Swiss Grasshoppers are the equivalent of a satellite team of the Premier League's Wolverhampton Wanderers. Fosun Group, a Chinese capital, bought Wolves for £45 million in 2016, and now Wolves are firmly established in the Premier League and have benefited a lot from the transfer market. Buy low, train on the platform, sell high, this is the business model of Wolves. Compared with the original purchase price, the commercial value of Wolves has soared five times.
The head of the Fosun Group behind Wolves is Guo Guangchang, while the consortium person behind the Swiss Grasshoppers is Guo Guangchang's wife. Obviously, there is a model of strategic and commercial cooperation between Grasshoppers and Wolves. The Grasshoppers currently have a collection of promising Japanese, Korean and Chinese players, one of whom has already joined Wolves from Grasshoppers. From a competitive point of view, this is a way to raise the level of the team; from a commercial point of view, this is a way to expand the soccer market in China and Asia.
In my opinion, Chinese soccer is currently at a low ebb and the strength of our players lacks conviction when compared to their Japanese and Korean counterparts. Against this backdrop, if players are willing to take the initiative to jump out of the domestic comfort zone of high salaries and low performance, and are willing to travel to Europe to seek opportunities for self-improvement, Chinese-funded clubs are obviously a good choice.
Of course, only our players continue to improve the strength of more players bravely set foot in Europe to seek opportunities, and even in the non-Chinese capital background of the club foothold, this is the real stay in the ocean, the progress of Chinese soccer will also have a greater impact.
