By Cameron Wilson
The Chinese football season gets underway in early March, and if you ever wanted to be a part of something local, then there is no better way than becoming a fan of one of the city’s football clubs. Shanghai currently has three clubs playing in the Chinese Super League, so there are options aplenty.
Shanghai Shenhua
Shanghai Shenhua is the city’s oldest club. And although 20 years of history may seem absurdly short to football fans from Europe or South America, in China 1994 is Year Zero as far as professional football is concerned.
Sadly though, Shenhua are the big underachievers of Chinese football – just one league title in 1995 to their name, and a tragically tantalizing eight runners-up awards. They’re also the soap opera club of the CSL, having in recent years mostly made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
From 2007 until last month, Shenhua were owned by video game tycoon Zhu Jun. Something of an eccentric Chinese nouveau riche (always a tautological statement), many fans felt Zhu used the club as a plaything for his own amusement. His own image featured prominently on the club’s website, and in 2007 he selected himself for a friendly against Liverpool, before being subbed off after five minutes.
He also disappointed fans by pursuing a controversial transfer policy – constantly selling off the club’s best Chinese players, such as Chinese internationals Li Weifeng, once of Everton, and Gao Lin, now a first team regular with Asian Champions Guangzhou Evergrande. In a league where teams can only field four foreign players, selling your best Chinese players pretty much guarantees you won’t win anything.
Zhu answered his critics in spectacular fashion in 2012, bringing EPL stars Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba to Shenhua, and putting Shanghai on the world football map in the process. But it all went wrong, with Drogba and Anelka leaving under acrimonious circumstances before the year was out, and Zhu saying he would no longer put any funds into the club beyond the bare minimum.
More drama and player sales followed, before deeply unpopular Zhu sold up his controlling stake to Greenland Real Estate in February – the team are now officially known as Shanghai Greenland Shenhua – marking a new chapter for the club.
For those interested in following Shenhua, expect a season of transition. Zhu exercised a scorched earth policy on the squad before selling up, so at the time of going to print the club is busy in the transfer market.
Defenders Paulo André, from major Brazilian side Corinthians, and South Korean Cho Byung-Kuk, from J-League side Jubilo Iwata, are the foreign signings so far. Expect a big-name European striker to join before the season starts.
Shenhua is the best supported team in town and plays at one of China’s few football-specific arenas – Hongkou Stadium, which always features a great atmosphere even if only a third of its 33,000 seats are taken.
// Hongkou Stadium, 444 Dong Jiangwan Lu, by Sichuan Bei Lu 东江湾路444号, 近四川北路. Nearest Metro Hongkou Football Stadium on Lines 3 & 8
Shanghai East Asia
Down at Shanghai Stadium in Xujiahui, Shanghai East Asia are a club on the up – one which lacks the baggage of big brothers Shenhua – and they have the growing support to match. The club began life in 2006 in the third (bottom) division of the Chinese League, working their way up to play in the CSL for the first time last year.
The team plays an attractive brand of football and is notable in China for making domestic players its driving force – most of its playing staff graduated from its academy on Chongming Island. Star player Wu Lei was CSL third top scorer last season with 15 goals – not a bad return in a 30-game season which sees foreigners take up most of the striker slots. His new teammate, Swedish international and former Sunderland striker Tobias Hysén, is the club’s biggest signing to date and underlines its ambitions to usurp Shenhua as the leading team in town.
// Shanghai Stadium, 1111 Caoxi Bei Lu, by Tianyaoqiao Lu 漕溪北路1111号, 近天钥桥路
Shanghai Shenxin
The poor relation in the city’s CSL scene is Shanghai Shenxin. The club was based in Nanchang in Jiangxi Province until moving to suburban Jinshan District in 2012. The club moved again last year, this time to Yuanshen Stadium in Pudong. This season Yuanshen is being renovated, forcing the side to move again – to an as yet unconfirmed stadium in Shanghai. (Wherever they lay their jumpers for goalposts, that’s their home...)
Unsurprisingly, with such a nomadic existence the club doesn’t have much in the way of a fanbase, and it is hard to recommend picking Shenxin as your team over Shenhua or East Asia. If they end up moving to a stadium near you, perhaps that will be reason enough.
What all three clubs share, however, is a very welcoming attitude to foreign fans and a convenient way to get a taste of some local sporting action at a competitive price – match tickets usually go for around RMB50 and there are usually plenty to spare.
// Cameron Wilson has been following Shanghai Shenhua since 2001 and four years ago started www.wildeastfootball.net, the best resource for following the Chinese Super League. Up to speed, insightful and amusing, it now has contributors covering football across the Middle Kingdom.
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