On March 14, the CFA officially released a notice on player transfer registration matters for the 2022 season for Chinese Super League, Chinese A League and Chinese B League clubs, announcing that the first transfer window of the new season for the Chinese Super League and Chinese A League will be opened from March 15th to April 15th. This signals that the CFA and CFL preparatory team are pushing forward the preparatory work at full speed in accordance with the established plan for the April 23 start of the new season of the Chinese Super League.
However, in view of the recent epidemic in some provinces and cities in the country rebounded significantly, the tournament organizers of the operational team suspended the alternative venues of clubs at all levels of field visits, detailed investigation work transferred to the local member associations to assist in carrying out. Can the home and away system be resumed in the new season of the Chinese Super League? The answer to this question will depend on the development of the epidemic and the comprehensive situation of epidemic prevention and control work.
From the official information of the CFA on the 14th, the first player transfer window of the new season of the Chinese Super League and the Chinese League A will be opened on March 15th, with a deadline of April 15th. This timetable and the tournament organizers previously launched, to April 23 for the new season of the Chinese Super League kick-off time node of the competition plan coincides with. Up to now, the Chinese Football Association, CFA preparatory group is according to plan to actively promote the new season of the Chinese Super League and other levels of professional league preparations for the start of the tournament. It is reported that, from the feedback of professional clubs at all levels collected by the tournament organizers at the beginning of this month, the 18 clubs of the Chinese Super League and the vast majority of Chinese Super League clubs belonging to the local football associations have expressed their support for the resumption of the league's home-and-away system.
Recently, however, some cities in China, including the places where some professional league clubs are registered, have respectively experienced more significant epidemics. From the perspective of safeguarding the health and safety of personnel, the tournament organizers have always made epidemic prevention a top priority in the execution of the opening work.
So, can the home and away system be resumed in the new season of the Chinese Super League? In fact, before this, in order to cope with a variety of possible situations, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) and the preparatory group of the Chinese Football League (CFL) have formulated four sets of competition plans for the Chinese Super League.
The second of the four sets of plans received a highlighted recommendation based on the information shared by all parties at the February 23rd league work session.
The details of this plan are "a combination of home and away system and stage and group system". That is, imitating the system of last season's Chinese League, the 34 rounds of the season will be divided into 4 stages in the form of "10+8+8+8 (rounds)". The 18 teams in each stage are divided into 3 groups, and each stage is a double round-robin game with home and away matches within the group. At the end of each phase, the teams in each group are rotated, remaining at six teams per group, and then playing a double round-robin within the group.
It should be noted that the CFA and the CFL preparatory team have been striving to maximize the restoration of the home-and-away system in the process of formulating the plan. Only as a last resort, will consider the implementation of the past two seasons of the "match system". People involved in the preparation of the Chinese Super League also said that the epidemic prevention policy is a major national policy. An important prerequisite for organizing the tournament is to ensure the health and safety of the personnel. While promoting the resumption of the home-and-away system, it is also necessary to anticipate extreme situations and introduce detailed countermeasures.
