I find the whole rise if the Chinese clubs coming onto the world market fascinating to say the least. Last year I blogged about the first major forays the Chinese were making with Alex Teixera among others going east. The truth is though this has been going on for a few years. Top level football is heavily concentrated in Europe. All the best teams and players play here and generally it is seen as the place to be. With that in mind, leagues outside the big four in Europe (England, Germany, Italy, Spain) have to overpay. The interesting question for years has been what league outside of Europe will be a major player at the top level?. For years my thought was Brazil. A major producer of talent, it needed investment to keep that talent there and if it ever does it for me will be the one to rival Europe.
The rise of the Chinese Super League actually mirrors the rise of the English Premier league in some ways. In England the game was in crisis. The clubs were not making enough, off the pitch problems such as hooliganism was rife and they were falling behind their European rivals. So the Premier League was born and after some ludicrous TV deals the English clubs now have the financial muscle to raid everywhere, until the Chinese came along.
The response to the Chinese clubs coming onto the market has been I find anyway, hypocritical. When players decide to go to China it's "for the money", "mercenary", "no ambition" etc. Yet when players go to England the media doesn't kick up a storm. Does anyone think players are signing for English clubs for anything other than money? Did the likes of Shaqiri, Víctor Valdés, Fernando Llorente and the many other foreign players in the premier league dream of playing for Stoke, Middlesbrough or Swansea. It seems that if it's not an English club splashing the cash its bad for the game. We had a similar reaction when Paris Saint-Germain were bought by Qatari owners, Monaco, Zenith St Petersburg and Anji Makhachkala when they all began to flex some financial muscle.
Then we get golden quotes from Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness labeling the Chinese spending "sick". While I do agree the sums on offer are ludicrous in the extreme there is nothing different in Chinese clubs hoovering up talent much like Hoeness' Bayern have been doing for years. One has to get the feeling that the European elite are indeed worried about the "threat" China poses.
I do think though it will take quite a period of time before Chinese clubs become major players in the market by being in the frame for the best talent. My personal opinion is that rather than making Carlos Tévez the highest paid footballer in the world they should be using that money bringing in the best coaches. The warning signs however are plenty for China. One only needs to look at the old North American Soccer League and the fall of Anji Makhachkala as examples of what could so easily happen.
Cycles are very much part of football. We see this with Spanish sides dominating European football currently, it won't last, just like the English dominance of the 2000s and the Italians before them. The cycle of English clubs being financially unchallenged could be ending soon and if it does result in a more even spread if talent across the world, then where is the harm in that.
The European elite are rattled, make no mistake. Nothing like this scale of spending outside of Europe for in-prime players has occurred before and this is definitely a trend worth following.
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