As China signs up some of the world’s leading football
players, Simon Chadwick explains how this incredibly ambitious
football strategy is sending shock waves around the world game:
EACH YEAR, EUROPEAN
football clubs are able to buy and sell players during two specific periods of
time, known as transfer windows. One of the windows is in summer; the other is
in winter and in Europe this year’s has just closed.
Normally these windows are characterised
by the lavish, high-profile spending of football’s elite – the likes of Real
Madrid, Manchester United and Bayern Munich. Indeed, a
week ago the English Premier League was being heralded as
being the £1
billion player transfer market (the value of transactions that took
place during 2015).
But in one astounding move, everything
that many people thought they knew about football and the transfer of its
players was turned on its head. Last Tuesday, Columbian
international Jackson
Martinez transferred
from Atletico Madrid of Spain to China's Guangzhou
Evergrande for £32 million (US$47 million).
Martinez’s fee is a considerable way short of the world’s record
transfer fee, although it sets a new Chinese record and was the highest valued
deal on the planet during this window. Nor, by any measure, is Martinez the
best player in the world, although he had only been with Atletico for seven
months and was being touted as a possible signing for Arsenal.
 |
| Jackson Martinez has joined Chinese Super League side Guangzhou Evergrande. Image AAP |
What most caught the attention of people was his unexpected
transfer to China; what affected others was the shock that Chinese football can
and will compete for playing talent in this way. Martinez’s signing, as well as
those by other Chinese clubs (such as Brazilian international Ramires,
who moved from Chelsea to Jiangsu Suning), are
a breath-taking statement of intent.
For those who have read my commentaries before,
these developments have been simmering for more than a year. But now they are
becoming a reality that is heralding a new era in world football. Whether people
like it or not, the sport’s traditional global power base is set to shift
dramatically.
Europeans and their football will be the most affected, and each
will have to get used to no longer being top-dogs, particularly when it comes
to signing world-class players for big fees and salaries. This is clearly
troubling some already; general reaction to recent developments has seen
stereotypes, prejudices and myths about the China and the Chinese spill-out
from the mainstream media and through social networks to the bars and cafes of
Europe.
A common response has been ‘it won’t last’; but this is incredibly
dismissive of China, its people, its economic strength and the country’s
commitment to achieving its goals (whatever industry it may be).
One reason people
question the longevity of Chinese football’s development is that, somehow,
clubs and player signings are conceived of as being a front for corruption.
This is simply not true, China has numerous, legitimate, successful and
efficiently run corporations.
Several critics and cynics have commented that China is the
new MLS (the United States’ top professional league); an
interesting development but nothing new and certainly not something that will
ever threaten European football’s power. Others have alternatively cast China
as being a retirement home for fading stars seeking one last payday before
hanging up their boots.
Martinez alone debunks both of those myths; he’s a
player around his peak, and he chose not to take the well-worn path into the
English Premier league.
The last couple of weeks therefore seem to reveal as much about
the West’s continued failure to understand and accept China, as much as it does
about players and footballing ambition. Yet it is the Chinese who are changing
by embracing the world’s favourite game, while the ignorance of Europeans and
others is blinkering them to the profound shifts that are now taking place.
Just as in other industrial sectors over the last two decades, the
world of football is about to change – in fact, it is already changing. Before
2013, a Chinese club had never won the Asian Champions League; now, Guangzhou
Evergrande has won it twice. The club has also won the Chinese
Super League for the last five seasons, leading some commentators to label the
Guangdong team ‘Asia’s first super club’.
At Guangzhou, Martinez will be coached by Luiz Felipe
Scolari who, among other achievements, guided Brazil to World
Cup victory in 2002. The club has the means to continue recruiting
such talent, owned as it is by the Evergrande Real Estate Corporation and by Jack
Ma, the Alibaba founder.
Elsewhere, we can already see the level of
commitment being displayed by the club’s owners. The Evergrande
Academy is an ostentatious Harry Potter-style campus tasked with
producing China’s football stars of tomorrow. This is exactly what President
Xi, the great instigator of football’s bamboo revolution, wants;
and his entrepreneurial lieutenants are leading the charge.
It is therefore probably no coincidence that Ma’s Guangzhou signed
Martinez from Atletico. The Spanish club is partly owned by Wang
Xianlin of the Wanda Corporation. Together, Wang and Ma
have become prime movers in helping China to create an $850 billion sport
industry. Indeed, Wang has overseen the acquisition of numerous sporting
properties over the last year, including Infront Sports and Media, and the
Ironman triathlon group.
For those still doubting China’s intentions or the strength of its
influence, the Wang/Ma link should serve as a salutary lesson about football’s
new realities. The collective nature of China still pervades even today, hence
members of the country’s football community will cooperate for the sake of the
greater good.
This means that, while Europeans may see football as one club
against another, the new reality will be very different.
Simon Chadwick is ‘Class of 92’ Professor of Sports
Enterprise at Salford University, Manchester in the UK, where he is also a
member of the Centre
for Sports Business. First published in The Asia and the Pacific Policy
Society Policy Forum. Read the
original article.