Is China Taking All Your Soccer
A reasonable question to ask considering the influx of the Chinese League purchases in recent history.
In recent years the Chinese Super League has straight up PAID (ALL CAPS) Chelsea for some of their fringe players. They’ve also forked over an amount of cash that can only be classified as a truck full for players like Hulk and Carlos Tevez. This all signals a rise of China as a buying power on the world soccer stage for now. But is that enough to be a warning sign for the rest of the leagues?
Serge: Chelsea got paid, above and beyond market value for some of their players from Chinese clubs. And this has been a pattern in the last few years. Axel Witsel, Ramires, Hulk, Carlos Tevez, Papiss Cisse. Not your marquee All-Star players…
Cameron Climie: And not for astronomical amounts of money. Carlos Tevez was something like 72–million Pounds.
Serge: Carlos Tevez’s salary is also something ridiculous. All power to you. If you’re getting paid Cristiano Ronaldo money out in China… do it.
Cam: I did a little bit of digging as to why this is happening and what seems to be going on is that the Chinese Super League has a super tight restriction on the number of the non-national players that you’re allowed to purchase as a team. Which means that it has driven the price of domestic players up and also the price of international players up. And if you’re going to spend stupid sums of money, it makes sense to spend it on proven players given that China is a relative newcomer to the world soccer market.
Serge: It works in two ways. Part of their mandate is to bring up the national soccer team to a competitive level and you’re not going to get that by playing against the other players. Opening up that market gives them better competition for development, it’s good.
Cam: From the standpoint of China, they want to be a footballing super power with a domestic ambition to do so. Clubs have the incentive to spend big so you can pray favor with the Communist Party and say “look at us, we’re committing to this goal. Bringing in all these foreign stars and big names.”
Serge: I just don’t see a mass exodus coming. That’s what a few people have been afraid of.
Cam: I don’t think so.
Serge: But you also hit the nail on the head there mentioning that there is a restriction on the amount of players they can bring in. On top of that, there is no Champion’s League…
Cam: There is the Asian Champion’s League.
Serge: Not quite the same. That’s like comparing our YMCA League to the NBA Finals.
Cam: That’s true. To a certain extent, football is football. And if you’re Oscar or Ramires and you’re on the fringes of a Chelsea squad and you can either make a bunch of money sitting on the bench in London or you can make a bunch of money playing in China and be a national icon and be someone that’s a cult figure among fun. There is a pretty valid argument for taking door number 2.
Serge: I’m not arguing against that, but part of that is that they’ll never get the level of competition that we have here. If you’re that fringe guy, you’re going, no argument. If you’re a Diego Costa or a Cristiano Ronaldo, you’re staying.
Cam: Some of those surprise me. It surprised me that Ezequiel Lavezzi went, given how vital he was to PSG.
Serge: That one was more the case of the money.
Cam: Which is funny because PSG can pay their players.
Serge: The biggest impact it’s going to have on us is that it will suck away from that MLS market which picked up on some of the same player, but financially non-competitive with China. We were able to get glimpses out here, now the pendulum is going the other way.
Cam: And a lot of that is just math. A small Chinese market is twice the size of the biggest MLS market.
Serge: Absolutely, and that’s what it comes down to. But we can both agree it’s a little bit too early for the alarms.
Cam: Antonio Conte complained that the CSL represented a thread to the EPL to buy up all these players. Look, at the end of the day you have the choice. Don’t sell the players if you don’t want to. No one forced you to take the money that you got offered for Oscar, you chose to do that.
Serge: That’s not true, math forced you. That’s a lot of money.
