The Chinese Super League is due to kick off a new season this weekend but this year has proven to be slightly different due to the insane amount of money recently injected into the league. In recent years the transition that is occurring in China has not failed to amaze soccer fans worldwide. Seemingly out of nowhere the Chinese Super League has produced some of the wildest and lavish spendings in the transfer windows that we’ve ever seen. Of course, globally the amount of money in soccer is ever increasing. Transfer records are being consistently broken every few years. Giants across Europe such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich, PSG and the majority of the top half of the Premier League have the ability to spend seemingly ridiculous amounts of money on the best talent around. However what is happening in China is different.
Until now Chinese soccer has never really been given much notice as it’s simply not the sport that the Chinese people are best at. Each country has it’s most popular and highest performing sporting discipline and China’s just isn’t soccer. Until now the Chinese Super League has had little to no international interest and nationally China’s only significant appearance was their appearance at the 2002 World Cup finals, in which they lost all of their group games without scoring a single goal. All of a sudden it appears that the Chinese government and in particular president Xi Jinping want to transform China into a soccer superpower. Although personally, I believe in traditional growth in soccer you can’t doubt that the Chinese government is up to now succeeding in attracting some world class talent to the country but the catch is the negative impact upon the players who choose to make the transfer to the far East.
Every player who is involved in speculation regarding a move to China must encounter the same debate in their minds. Do I want to try and compete at the highest level in soccer or am I in the game purely to make a living and earn as much money as I can.?As things stand there’s no doubting that the highest standards of soccer are found in western Europe but due to this sporting uprising in China the highest paid players aren’t necessarily those at the highest level in Europe. Previously Ronaldo was the highest paid player in the world and there’s probably fair enough, you can debate whether Ronaldo or Messi is the best player around but really anyone will accept that one of those two should be the highest paid. But in comes China. As of today the highest paid player is Carlos Tevez. A fantastic player at his peak but if any European club were to be paying over £600k a week for a player who is past his best it would make most people physically sick. But from the point of view of the player, his career is coming to an end and he’s got the opportunity to earn ridiculous amounts of money so why wouldn’t he?
The problem for me becomes apparent when you look towards the man in second position in the list of the most paid players. Oscar, formerly of Chelsea. The Brazilian is a player capable of playing in many of the world’s most respected teams but he’s made the decision to move to China. The first piece of madness in this is that he left Chelsea for a fee of £51 million. I don’t doubt that Roman Abramovich was jumping for joy after being offered this unbelievably financially inflated offer. Oscar plays alongside fellow Brazilian Hulk at Shanghai SIPG, earning a hefty £400k per week. But the difference between Oscar and Tevez is that the former is only 25 years of age. He’s effectively said goodbye to a career at the top level of soccer in order to chase after high wages. A huge waste of talent and a shame for both European and Brazilian soccer.
It’s pretty much impossible to predict what the next big news story coming out of China will be but there’s one thing for sure and that’s that it’ll be a massive surprise.
