China moves to curb splashy club spending
Print Edition
CHINA will put limits on the wild sums its clubs are spending on international players, authorities said yesterday, days after the transfer window opened and the Asian record was promptly smashed.
Xinhua news agency said yesterday that clubs have been “burning money” on the acquisition of expensive and overpaid foreign talent and have neglected the development of domestic players.
An unnamed spokesman of the General Administration of Sport told state media in an interview that the government would “regulate and restrain high-priced signings, and make reasonable restrictions on players’ high incomes”.
The statement came days after Shanghai SIPG recruited Brazilian star Oscar from Chelsea in a 60-million euro (US$63 million) deal that broke the Asian transfer record.
Carlos Tevez, Argentina’s former Manchester United and Manchester City striker, was lured to rival Chinese Super League club Shanghai Greenland Shenhua in another big-money deal.
Tevez’s transfer fee was 10.5 million euros, according to the website transfermarkt.com, which tracks football transfers, and the 32-year-old is reportedly set to become the highest-paid player in the world with a two-year contract of 38 million euros per season.
Oscar’s deal with Andre Villas-Boas’ SIPG is thought to be 24 million euros a season — which would still put him above Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi of Barcelona.
Last year Chinese clubs broke the Asian transfer record four times — including three times in 10 days in the winter transfer window, when their spending outstripped even the mega-rich English Premier League. The world-beating deals, however, seem to be driven more by non-fiscal considerations.
China’s national team is ranked a lowly 82nd in the world — just below the Caribbean island nation of St Kitts and Nevis, population less than 60,000 — but President Xi Jinping hopes his country will one day host and eventually win a World Cup.
The wild spending has drawn criticism in China, with many fans asking whether the huge sums would be better spent on building up the country’s lagging infrastructure and talent in the sport.
Without citing specific numbers or names, the sports administration official said the government would “set the upper limit” for players’ transfer fees and income and control “irrational investment”.
It would consider measures such as taking fees from clubs that spend excessively to support youth development programs. “We must take building hundred-year clubs as the goal,” the spokesman said, adding that clubs’ financial supervision would be strengthened, and their spending on players would be controlled.
“We will remove the seriously insolvent clubs from the professional league.”
In December the Chinese Football Association announced that it will lower the number of overseas players allowed on domestic teams from five to four.
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