The new season of the Chinese Super League is about to begin, and there are still doubts about the changes in the lineup of the participating teams. Recently, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) announced that Liangjiang Athletic Club (hereinafter referred to as the "Chongqing team"), which was originally rooted in Chongqing, had been forced to cancel its registration because of its long-term failure to solve the problem of salary arrears and its failure to satisfy the conditions for entry into the CFA. Meanwhile, Dalian People Professional Football Club (hereinafter referred to as "Dalian People"), which was once relegated to the Central League, was able to be replaced and gained the right to participate in the new season of the Chinese Super League.
Although the lineup of the Chinese Super League team has not changed substantially, this change reveals the problems that exist in the professional league of China's national soccer team.
On the one hand, there is the ineffective handling of the club's wage arrears. The Chongqing team was forced to disqualify itself after failing to meet the FA's entry criteria because it had failed to resolve the issue of salary arrears for a long period of time. Although the club's players had expressed their willingness to take a pay cut, the club was still unable to recover.
After the withdrawal of Chongqing, the issue of players' wages will become more difficult. Since the players need to go through labor arbitration, according to the relevant provisions of the Sports Law, the soccer industry has a certain degree of autonomy, so the industry needs to give priority to arbitration. However, as the Football Association has canceled the registration qualification of Chongqing team, the club is actually no longer in the jurisdiction of the Football Association, forming a "vacuum zone". Players will face more difficulties than workers in other industries if they have to go through the judicial route. Previously, including the national football team captain Wu Xi, including the Jiangsu team players suffered "difficult to collect wages" problem, also belongs to this kind.
On the other hand, although the "resurrection" of the Dalian People's team is gratifying, the pressure on its survival is still enormous, which reflects the status quo of most clubs in China's national soccer professional league. The Football Association is currently implementing the club's share reform program, hoping to attract more investors to join through a diversified shareholding structure, in order to reduce the team's operating pressure and risk. However, Shandong Taishan and Henan clubs, which have previously completed the share reform, benefited from the good operating conditions before the share reform and successfully absorbed more investors. More clubs have been held back by heavy debts, discouraging other investors.
The poor operating conditions of clubs in general, on the one hand, stems from the "inherent inadequacy" of Chinese professional soccer: most teams rely on the "blood transfusion" of their parent companies for funding, and their own blood-supply capacity is insufficient. When the parent company is not doing well, the clubs are often in crisis. On the other hand, the management and business development ability of China's professional league is relatively weak, especially in the past two years, the tournament system schedule has shrunk significantly, the attendance rate has dropped seriously, the clubs launched by the Football Association of the neutral name policy is even worse, the intangible advertising benefits have been reduced significantly.
As the administrators of the national soccer soccer, both the Football Association and the Chinese Super League company, there is an urgent need to improve the ability to protect. Not only to protect the athletes to obtain labor income, in dealing with the problem of unpaid wages to give support, but also to protect the reasonable interests of the club, in the development of the schedule, sponsorship dividends and business development to give more support, establish a sense of community of interest, to "participants" rather than "administrator "The clubs should also be given more support in the areas of schedule development, sponsorship and business development.
Chongqing team "fall", Dalian people team "rebirth", the number of teams in the Chinese Super League has not changed, but this "life and death" is not a simple addition or subtraction. The entire Chinese professional soccer is actually still in the "attrition". Moreover, it is the Chongqing soccer team, which has a long history and had one of the hottest soccer markets in China, that has disappeared. Similar dramas could continue to play out for other clubs, and the FA needs to take steps as soon as possible to help soccer investors and the external market regain confidence, or at least, alleviate the insecurity in their minds.
