The support of Jiangsu fans for former Jiangsu players scattered around the country has quietly formed a unique landscape.
The crowd is like a flame, and each is scattered like a star.
After the breakup of Suning, former Jiangsu star Xie Pengfei moved to Wuhan Sanzhen. The moment he scored, he once again showed the profound celebration of "seeing the world with one eye". Xie Pengfei is eager to see himself, however, who can understand the mystery of Chinese soccer?
"With so many delinquent clubs getting involved, do you regret quitting?"
"It is a pity that we do not owe so much!"
On the eve of the 2022 season, the CFA has made a major concession to the issue of wage arrears in professional leagues, launching a "three-step" repayment plan; regardless of the length of the arrears and whether or not an agreement has been reached with the players, all clubs wishing to continue to participate will enter the league first, and the arrears will be repaid gradually.
Delinquent wages are no longer a prerequisite for membership.
Last April, I asked a former Suning club manager who had returned to the group about this. "Do you regret quitting clubs that owe you wages?"
He replied, "It is a pity that we do not owe so much!"
Dismantling after winning a championship is not the norm. Management even reflected, "If the media attention had been louder, would the consequences have been different?"
Ultimately, he just repeated, "We didn't owe as much as we could have, and selling players would have closed the loophole..." and "Who knew the later ones owed as much..."
It is obvious that the former Suning manager feels helpless, regretful and deeply resentful of Jiangsu's exit.
For the past two years, former Jiangsu players and staff have been gathering in Nanjing every year after the season. Feelings remain strong, but lives have gone their separate ways.
"Give me a striker and I can beat Luneng!"
Prior to the implementation of the league policy for the 2020 season, R&F took the lead in proposing the abolition of promotion and relegation; a policy supported not only by the relegated teams, but also by one powerhouse team - Suning.
Prior to entering the division that year, the team was already operating in an unenviable position, and many were mentally prepared for relegation.
More than halfway through the first phase, news of the team's salary arrears and training strikes came to light. At the time, many insiders received signals that Suning did not want to continue investing in soccer, but the team still had the belief that they could "change the minds of investors with excellent performance".
Driven by the belief, some players who had a strained relationship, such as the two main players in the backfield, put aside their personal grudges to encourage each other on the pitch and embrace each other in celebration after a win.
Before the second round of the 2020 Shanghai-Hong Kong-Suning match, Suning's chef secretly took photos of the team's training trip to Hong Kong in order to influence the other team's mentality, which was discovered by Arnautovic. The two sides had a "friendly" exchange.
This approach is certainly not to be advocated, but in a difficult context we can see everyone at the club doing their best to help the team.
After winning the championship, there were no bonuses or celebratory feasts. Olaroyo, a coach who didn't want his team to feel left out, consoled many of the title-winning heroes by buying a dozen Apple phones out of his own pocket before leaving.
He led the team to a Chinese Super League title and a runner-up finish in the AFC Cup with a scrappy squad in an underwhelming situation. It's safe to say that Suning's 2020 season was a perfect one, and while more people were expecting the team to perform in the 2021 season, that team quickly disbanded!
Many were perplexed by the quick dissolution of Suning after winning the title, but not without warning.
Before the Spring Festival of 2021, with many major contracts expiring and no one even talking about renewing them, the breakup atmosphere began to spread. After the Spring Festival, Suning investor Zhang Near East publicly stated that "it's time to cut", and everyone knew that Suning had completely given up on Jiangsu soccer!
Regarding the reason for Suning's withdrawal of capital, Ma Dexing, a famous media person of Sports Weekly, once wrote: "Facing the current situation of Jiangsu soccer, the first thing capitalists think of is to escape. What the club and the parent company are doing now speaks volumes. Because of a 'timid' nature, coupled with a 'speculative' drive, it is obviously naive to expect other owners to come forward to save professional clubs in Chinese soccer from the current turmoil."
In fact, Ma Dexing's words sum up Suning's motivation for investing in soccer very well - speculation!
At that time, Sun Tian did not make up its mind to let go of the club. Suning took the initiative and approached the relevant authorities to put pressure on them, and eventually took over the club at what seemed to be a smaller cost at the time (Shuntian also left it to Suning because Sun Ke's transfer fee of 66 million dollars had not yet been processed for the transfer).
After taking over the club, Suning had painted a grand blueprint for future development. However, the truth is that Suning has its own little agenda when it comes to investing in soccer.
Because Suning's efforts in e-commerce came much later than JD.COM and Taobao's, and their marketing tactics were far inferior to each other's; when they saw JD.COM signing exclusive sponsorship contracts with the Chinese Super League and the CBA, and Alibaba joining Evergrande in sponsoring the Club World Cup, both companies gained a lot of traffic through professional sports.
These moves also inspired Suning; they sponsored Barcelona, accepted Sun Tian, accepted Inter Milan, and invested heavily in copyrights and e-sports. They also hope to broaden Suning's industrial chain by channeling the traffic brought by sports to their e-commerce platform.
Investing in soccer has indeed brought Suning a good diversion. However, Suning has long been operating e-commerce with an offline mindset, and their business concepts and promotional models have not fully conquered consumers, resulting in Suning holding traffic, but unable to realize the cash. Moreover, a few years ago, Suning kept spending money almost every time it broadened a new area. They may have made plans to abandon Jiangsu soccer before investors thundered in.
Of course, if you do not get the league title, Suning is afraid that they will not offer such a high transfer price; if you do not get the league title, perhaps their exit will not cause so much concern. However, the championship raised the expectations of all parties on Jiangsu, and also raised Suning's appetite. After Jiangsu's dissolution, Ma Dexing revealed a detail: "In 2020, before Suning won the league title, the company contacted companies in Wuxi and Suzhou. At that time, there were many options, such as the club relocation, Suzhou Dongwu, Kunshan merger and so on. The Wuxi Sports Bureau also wanted to take over, but the price offered by Suning sent Wuxi home for 10 billion yuan a year."
Shanghai, which entered the Chinese soccer world at the same time as Suning, spent 12 billion yuan to get a championship, spent billions to more than 10 billion yuan, and has not yet won the league title of Huaxia, Quanjian, Shenhua in the Greenland period; in contrast, Suning won 6.3 billion yuan of the league title in five years, and was quite successful based on the results alone.
But even so, Suning has invested in Jiangsu soccer for five years, still leaving an amateurish impression on all sides.
In terms of signings, Brazilian foreigner Adriano had already flown to Nanjing; at that time, after getting a "positive" reply from the club, Suning coach Petrescu had already called Hot Bird to talk about technical tactics. As a result, these two foreigners did not join Suning in the end.
In terms of preparation, the first game of the Suning period, the AFC Champions League away to fly to Vietnam, the team only got on the plane, did not bring the training ball this matter was stabbed by the players to the media.
In the first league game of the Olaroyo era, the debut was slated for No. 28 Yang Xiaotian, but Yang Jiawei was written as No. 27 on the list submitted by Li Jinyu, who at the time did not even go to Nanjing Olympic Stadium with the big team.
When Olaroyo renewed his contract with Suning, he added a clause that gave bonuses for finishing in the top four. At the time, Suning's trader W defaulted to tying fourth place in the league to qualification for the AFC Champions League.In '19, Olaroyo led his team to a fourth place finish but did not qualify for the AFC Champions League. When Olaroyo asked the club for money, Suning's trader said, "Fourth place can't play in the AFC Champions League!"
Before Suning 2020 entered the tournament, W did two things: first, to save money, he fired the team's laundryman and asked the team's staff to launder practice and game gear for every player and coaching staff member.
Secondly, with the club in such financial difficulty, W still gave an 8 million contract extension to a player who didn't even make the division for medical reasons.
Previously, Suning ate buffet after training at Xuzhuang base, but at the beginning of the 21st, under the leadership of assistant coach Cao Rui, the team resumed training only boxed lunches, which need to be collected with a ticket; at the direction of W, the non-renewal of auspicious, Zhou Yun, Gu Chao, not only endured a long period of arrears of wages, the club also did not prepare a boxed lunch for them.
