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Foreign signings not welcome as Evergrande eyes all-Chinese team
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CHINESE champion Guangzhou Evergrande has announced plans to field a Chinese-only squad by 2020, media said yesterday, in a surprise turnaround after years of success based on big-money foreign signings.
Evergrande has won the Chinese Super League for the last six seasons, plus the AFC Champions League in 2013 and 2015, with the help of mainly South American firepower and top foreign managers.
Evergrande has been imitated by other well-heeled Chinese teams with spending on players soaring over the past year.
But club boss and real estate tycoon Xu Jiayin said he planned to strip out all foreign players by the end of this decade, according to Xinhua news agency.
“In my view, the ideal all-Chinese squad for Evergrande is composed of a world top manager and all native players,” Xu was quoted as saying at an event before the start of the CSL season. “Our purpose ... is to contribute to the development of Chinese football and all our work needs to be focused on this.”
Xu’s comments follow an official crackdown on “irrational” spending after Chinese clubs broke the Asian transfer record five times in a year and reportedly made Brazil’s Oscar (with Shanghai SIPG) and Argentina striker Carlos Tevez (with Shanghai Greenland Shenhua) the world’s best paid players.
Chinese authorities said they would rein in transfer fees and cap wages, while cutting the number of foreign players each team can use from four per match to three.
Yesterday, the Beijing Youth Daily said CSL teams would automatically forfeit games 0-3 this season if they don’t field at least one under-23 Chinese player.
Evergrande is jointly owned by the Evergrande Group real estate giant and China’s e-commerce titan Alibaba.
But Xu signalled a more stringent financial approach for the club when he said: “Our revenue comes mainly from ticket sales, which are not good enough to cover our expenses, and we have to run the club as a business.
“We need to increase our earnings through player exchanges and build the team through young player training instead of buying.”
Evergrande’s roster currently includes five foreign players: Colombia’s Jackson Martinez, Brazilians Ricardo Goulart, Paulinho and Alan, and Kim Young-gwon of South Korea.
Its manager is former Brazil, Portugal and Chelsea boss Luiz Felipe Scolari, who took over in 2015. Evergrande also won the ACL in 2013 under another World Cup-winning coach, Italy’s Marcello Lippi.
In 2016, China was one of the world’s top five spenders on international football talent, doubling its payouts from the previous year to US$451 million.
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