On March 14, the official channel of the Chinese Football Association announced the "notice on the player transfer registration of the Chinese Super League, Chinese A League and Chinese B League clubs in the 2022 season", announcing that the first transfer window of the new season of the Chinese Super League and the Chinese A League will be opened from March 15 to April 15, which indicates that the CFA and the CFL preparatory team are making every effort to push forward the preparations in accordance with the established plan for the Chinese Super League to start on April 23rd. This move shows that the CFA, CFA preparatory group is in accordance with the established plan of the new season of the Chinese Super League kicked off on April 23, go all out to promote the preparatory work.
However, due to the recent epidemic in some provinces and cities in the country rebounded significantly, the tournament organizers suspended the alternative venues for clubs at all levels of field inspection, detailed inspection work temporarily transferred to the local member associations to help complete. Can the home and away system be successfully resumed in the new season of the Chinese Super League? The final result will depend on a variety of factors such as the development of the epidemic and prevention and control measures.
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 closed date of April 15th. This time schedule and the tournament organizers before the launch of the April 23rd new season of the Chinese Super League opening node coincided. At present, the Chinese Football Association (CFA), the Chinese Football League preparatory group is in accordance with the established plan to actively promote the new season of the Chinese Super League and other levels of professional league preparations for the opening. 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 restoration of the league's home and away system.
However, recently, including some professional league clubs registered places, some cities in China respectively appeared more obvious epidemic. From the perspective of safeguarding the health and safety of personnel, the tournament organizers have always made epidemic prevention a top priority in the process of promoting the opening of the tournament.
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 developed four sets of competition plans for the Chinese Super League.
According to the communication between all parties in the February 23rd league work meeting, the second of the four plans was pushed as the main one. The details of the plan are, "home and away system combined with stage and group system". That is, following the system of last season's Chinese League, the 34 rounds of the season will be divided into 4 stages according to the "10+8+8+8 (rounds)" model. In each stage, the 18 teams are divided into 3 groups. In each stage, a double round-robin of home and away matches will be played within the group. At the end of each phase, the teams in each group are rotated, with six teams remaining in each group, and a double round-robin within the group is played.
It should be noted that the CFA and the CFL preparatory team have always strived to maximize the restoration of the home-and-away system in the process of formulating the plan. Only as a last resort will it consider using the "match system" practiced in the past two seasons. 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. Therefore, while promoting the resumption of the home-and-away system, it is also necessary to anticipate extreme conditions and introduce detailed countermeasures.
