In a recent social media post hailing his team's Coppa Italia win, Inter Milan club president Zhang Kangyang said, "We've finally lifted the trophy again, but this is just the beginning." The sentiment caught the attention of a number of former Suning players, including Chinese national team captain Wu Xi, who retweeted it on social media with an accompanying message, openly demanding unpaid wages from Suning FC.
With the dissolution of Suning FC, Zhang Kangyang is currently only serving as the president of the World Milan Club, so Suning Group has yet to make a public response to this incident. According to Shanghai's Oriental Sports Daily, the players signed a settlement agreement with Suning FC in which Suning promised to pay back their outstanding salaries at a specific point in time last year, but now that months have passed since the deadline agreed upon in the agreement, the players have yet to receive their paychecks.
Against this background, on March 10th, the lawsuit between Zhou Yun, who has retired, and Suning FC was opened in Nanjing Yuhuatai District People's Court. In addition, the lawsuits of players Yang Jiawei, Nan Xiaoheng and assistant coach Cao Rui were also heard in the same court, and some players even filed lawsuits outside Nanjing. Currently, some of these cases are still pending, while others are waiting to be heard by a higher court.
With the previous Suning club staff collective payroll different, the players mostly in the name of individual payroll. For example, the contracts of Zhou Yun, Ji Xiang and Gu Chao have expired at the end of 2020, and after the team was disbanded, Zhou Yun chose to retire, while Ji Xiang and Gu Chao joined other teams as free agents. Players with contracts, such as captain Wu Xi, had to give up two months' salary in 2021 in order to continue their careers in exchange for transfer certificates issued by the club and were able to join other teams.
Compared with the staff's arrears of wages and compensation amounting to a total of $3 million, the players' arrears of wages are even more enormous. What is more, some players were not only owed wages, but also had to advance more than $1 million in treatment and recovery costs after they were injured because the club could not afford the medical expenses, only to end up waiting for the news of the team's dissolution.
