The Chinese Super League : The Faster The Rise, The Faster The Fall

Back in 2016, Chelsea boss Antonio Conte lost two of his team's Brazilian stars, Oscar and Ramires, to the Chinese League. After that incident he said in a press conference that the Chinese market is dangerous for everyone, and a danger for every top club in Europe. Italian mastermind Conte said this because he realized that the money that the Chinese league is sitting on could cost not only Chelsea by Oscar or Ramires, but many more European clubs. Conte's words came true later, and fast.

Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Carlos Tevez, Ezequeil Lavezzi, Marco Arnautovich, Hulk, Axel Witsell, Alexandro Pato, John Obi Mikel, Yannick Carrasco, Marek Hamsik, Maruane Fellaini all signed up for the Chinese clubs, just like Oscar and Ramires. Many have played or are playing in the league. Not only the players, but also high profile coaches like Fabio Capello, Marcelo Lippi, Luis Felipe Scholari have coached in the league.

But the same Chinese league which was so much arrogant about the cash they had, are now staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. The Chinese Super League first came to the attention of the football world in 2010, when China launched a campaign to establish itself as a "footballing superpower" in the football world. And to implement that campaign, China started with bringing in superstars from Europe at huge fees, with salaries that even the best clubs in Europe could not afford, the main goal was to build a strong national team. The big companies of the country came forward, bought club franchises, spent money with both hands wide open, but now the biggest crisis in the world of football is going on in the Chinese Super League. Before the covid outbreak, the Chinese league clubs were going through huge losses. The Chinese league has resumed after a four-month halt last week, but the future of almost all clubs in the league is uncertain. Twelve of the 18 teams in the league have lagged behind in paying salaries to their players, many clubs have not paid their players for 8/9 months, some clubs now do not even pay their staff. Most of the foreign stars in the league have left the club, with only Oscar and Maruane left among the noticable ones. The income of the clubs has also decreased and is decreasing. TV broadcasting and sponsorship revenues have plummeted, and the game is being held without spectators due to China's strict coveted rule, making it impossible to raise money from ticket sales. To make matters worse, the owners of many clubs are also trapped in debt. Chinese football fans often joke about the league as a "Real Estate league" because most of the clubs in the league are wholly or partly owned by the country's largest real estate companies, but covid outbreak has also disrupted the real estate business. Last year, the Chinese FA set a salary cap of € 3 million for foreign players and 5 million yuan ($ 75,000) for domestic players. But it has also reduced the interest of foreign players in the league. In 2019, Lu Yuewei, the former vice president of Chinese football, confidently expressed his ambition to make the Chinese league the "sixth biggest league of football in the world" after Europe's top five leagues.

At the peak of Chinese football, Ezequeil Lavezzi has earned more than 150 million in 3 years, Carlos Tevez's salary and goal tally are 8 million per goal, but the huge blows of pandemic and the real estate crisis are now nearing the end of Chinese football, and all those flashy sounds of money, well they don't ring anymore.