Since the opening of the A-League in 1994, China's soccer tournaments have been professionalized for nearly thirty years. In these thirty years of wind and rain course, countless players because of soccer and rich, especially in the prevalence of gold dollar soccer. Evergrande, Port, Shenzhen, Hebei Huaxia Happiness and other Chinese Super League teams invested heavily, making many local players earn several lifetimes of wealth. However, even so, there were still some A A superstars who were living on a shoestring, and even some who can only rely on driving a drop to make ends meet today. That player is Song Lihui, a prominent veteran of Shandong Taishan (Luneng).
Song Lihui was born in Dalian, Liaoning. He played as a defender for Liaoning at the start of the A-League, and in 1998, through the efforts of Coach Yin Tiesheng, Shandong Luneng brought in the then-unknown Song Lihui from Liaozhu, a move that completely rewrote Song Lihui's destiny. Due to his mediocre defensive abilities, Song Lihui joined Luneng and transitioned to the back, a position that gave full play to his excellent confrontation ability, speed, breaking ability and passing skills.
After Sandridge took over as head coach of Shandong Luneng, he directly positioned Song Lihui in a higher position in the midfield. Song Lihui was a fish out of water in the front position, not only frequently providing assists to his teammates, but also scoring on his own goal. Sandridge even nicknamed Song Lihui - Chinese Zidane - in recognition of his outstanding performance in the league. During his 10 seasons with Luneng, Song scored 24 goals in 159 First Division matches, and in 1999, he won the club's first-ever league and F.A.C. Cup with Luneng. For a player who transitioned from defender to forward, such an achievement was not easy. However, during his last two seasons at Luneng, Song Lihui gradually lost his place in the team. He moved to Nanchang Hengyuan in the 2008 season. After that, he played for Shenzhen for two seasons until he officially announced his retirement at the end of the 2009 season. After his retirement, Song Lihui returned to his hometown of Dalian, where he began working as an assistant coach for Dalian Albion, who were still in the Chinese B-League at the time. Since then, he has also served as an assistant coach and head coach in several amateur teams such as Jiujiang Liansheng, Shandong Tendeng and Taiyuan Zhongyou, but his coaching performance was average and he gradually faded out of the fans' view. Recently, Song Lihui reappeared in the fans' field of vision, which surprised many people. When an old fan was taking a drop, he found that the driver was wearing the old Shandong Luneng uniform. Upon closer inspection, the driver turned out to be Song Lihui, the double champion of Luneng. Through conversation, the fan learned that after leaving the Shandong Wangyue team last year, Song Lihui has been idle at home. In order to make a living, he had to open a drop, so far it has been a year. As the hero of Luneng's championship, Song Lihui is now reduced to driving a drop, which makes many Shandong fans feel embarrassed. I have to say, Song Lihui's luck is really bad. If he had been born a few years later and caught up with the Chinese Super League's golden dollar era, he would have had no problem earning 10 to 20 million dollars a year. Here, we also hope that the clubs Song Lihui used to play for can lend a helping hand to help this former "domestic Zidane" to stay in the beloved stadium...
