There is news from the Chinese Football Association (CFA) that the policy on foreign aid in the Chinese Super League may be adjusted next season to relax restrictions in order to promote the progress of international players. However, the wisdom of this approach is still in doubt.
Headaches often stem from bad decisions. If we blindly increase the number of "foreign aid" just because it is insufficient, just like the mistake made in the last arms race, it lacks specificity and cannot really enhance the strength of the team. Therefore, this response strategy is obviously inappropriate.
The Indian Super League and the Saudi Arabian League are two counter-examples. The Indian Premier League was once a hotspot, with a large number of foreign aiders, but ultimately the results were unsatisfactory and reforms were not put in place. The Saudi Arabian league has nominal restrictions, but the phenomenon of wildly purchasing foreign aid is still serious. with superstars such as Crow and Benzema joining the league, are stars such as Milinkovic and Neves enough? What has changed in Saudi Arabia's achievements?
Even if the Chinese Super League liberalizes its foreign aid restrictions and opens up to purchases, the impact on performance may not be too great. After the change of mind, who dares to really buy? Who can really buy the desired players? The ever-changing market is panic-inducing. Investing huge sums of money without seeing results, and when it fails, the blame is placed on you. No one wants to take the risk.
Relying on foreign aid to force international players to improve their viability is a viable strategy. After all, there were too many foreign aiders before, and some players in the Guangzhou team even became multi-millionaires, but their performance did not match their contribution, especially to the national team. Therefore, we should return to the right path instead of going to the other extreme.
When choosing foreign players, there is no need to pursue top stars such as Crow, Messi and Benzema. What we need are players with solid fundamentals who really know how to play soccer, such as the Czech Republic, Croatia and Norway in Eastern Europe, Japan and South Korea. If they can come to our local league, it will help to improve the basic value of our players, thus making significant progress in passing, controlling, dribbling and shooting. In this way, the second-rate level of the Asian zone will naturally not matter, and we can even compete with strong teams like Japan, South Korea and Iran.
In that case, 8.5 foreign aid slots are enough, so why worry about not making it to the World Cup?
Therefore, while it is feasible to relax the restrictions on foreign aid, we must not go to extremes. In terms of purchasing players, professional players with real strength should be selected; in terms of policy formulation, consistency should be maintained and frequent changes should be avoided. Only in this way can we go farther on the road of soccer.
