User:Asassdaw/Football in China

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The Chinese Super League is carried out in a double-round way of home and away games. There are 34 rounds in the whole season. The Chinese Super League implements the "up 3 down 3" policy, that is, the 16th, 17th and 18th places in the Chinese Super League are directly relegated to the A League. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the A League are directly promoted to the Chinese Super League.

Points rules

Each team has 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss.

After all the competitions of the Chinese Super League in the current year are completed, the player with the most points will rank first. If two or more teams have an equal number of points, they will be ranked in the following order:

1. Teams with equal points and more points in each other's competitions will be ranked first;

2. Teams with equal points and more goal difference in each other's games will be ranked first;

3. The team with the same score and the highest number of goals in each other's games will be ranked first;

4. The reserve team of the club to which it belongs is ranked first in the reserve team league this season, and it ranks first;

5. Teams with equal points that have the most goal difference in all competitions of the Chinese Super League in that year will rank first;

6. The team with equal points that scored the most goals in all the competitions of the Chinese Super League in that year will be ranked first;

7. The player with the highest fair play points is in the front (red and yellow cards will be deducted, 1 point will be deducted for each yellow card, and 3 points will be deducted for each red card);

8. Ranking will be determined by drawing lots.

The Chinese Football Association Super League (referred to as "Chinese Super League" or "Chinese Super League") is the highest-level professional football league in mainland China (Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan have football associations and leagues directly under FIFA and AFC), its lower leagues are the Chinese Football Association League A, the Chinese Football Association League B and the Chinese Football Association Member Association Champions League.

The Chinese Super League started in 2004 and was formerly known as the Chinese Football League A established in 1989. It is organized by the Chinese Football Association and operated by the Chinese Super League Co., Ltd. It is one of the most competitive football leagues in Asia with the highest average attendance rate. The champion will receive the Vulcan Cup. According to the latest ranking of the International Federation of Football History and Statistics in 2017, the Chinese Super League ranks 36th in the world and 3rd in the Asian League.

Since 2006, the number of participating clubs in the Chinese Super League has been stable at 16; on December 29, 2020, the Chinese Football Association confirmed that the Chinese Super League will expand to 18 teams in the 2022 season. The policy of “up 3 down 3” will be implemented in the 2022 season.

On July 6, 2022, the Chinese Football Association held a meeting to confirm that the Chinese Super League will resume home and away games from the 11th round (second stage) on August 5, 2022. On October 14th, the "restart" time of the Chinese Super League was finally confirmed. The Chinese Super League officially announced the 19th round, the 20th round of supplementary matches and the 23rd-25th rounds.

References:
2022赛季中超联赛赛制规则 | 奥分体育 夜神 （2022） https://m.aflc.com.cn/zuqiu/8825.html

The "Golden" Era of Chinese Super League:

The firm that initiate this era is Evergande Group, which is ranked 6th among the Chinese real estate company. The firms bought one football club located in Guangzhou and renamed it Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club. In their first season of CSL, they bought Darío Conca with a recording-breaking transfer fee of 8.2 million euros. By investing heavily in expensive foreign players, the result is that they won the league championship, and they never concede it until 2019. In the meantime, they also won two Asian Champions League titles. (The first Chinese club that ever achieve that.

The huge success of Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club also made its owner lucrative as he once become the "richest person in Asia with net worth of $43 billion". The owner once revealed its secret: "Advertising on the CCTV is about 150,000 per second. When we played a game, 25 TV stations broadcast live, and more than 300 media reported it. How much would it cost to advertise? " In short, it uses the popularity of the football in China to advertise its firm in a most effective way.

All the other firms soon starts to follow, and the real estate giants in China start to invest in the major clubs that played in the China Super League(CSL). A huge amount of money is poured into CSL, “from 2011 the salary of Super players increased tremendously, the gains in three years are more than 20%, in 2013 the growth was nearly 43%, Chinese football player’s average annual salary are nearly around 300 million or so (do not consider winning bonuses). ” However, in the meantime, “....CSL clubs’ expenditures are higher than revenue. In 2013, the CSL overall loss accounted for 264 million yuan, and a loss of 220 million yuan in 2014; In 2015, despite the explosive growth of income reaching a new high, but due to unreasonable revenue and expenditure structure, the overall loss reached 1.5 billion yuan, the loss has reached 60% of revenue". This means that it is an extremely unsustainable system that cannot be functioning by itself without external funds.

In 2020, as COVID-19 started, the whole world soon moves into lockdown, and everything changed. Companies refuse to pay players' salaries, the CSL is suspended due to COVID-19. Clubs in CSL suddenly found that they have no source of income, then, one by one, they are sunken into crisis: "In February, China’s defending champion, Jiangsu Suning F.C., was abruptly shuttered by the electronics retailer that owned it, less than four months after the team won the Super League championship". "Shandong Luneng, the Chinese FA Cup winner, was kicked out of the Asian Champions League last month for failing to pay employees." "Tianjin Tianhai, which once had World Cup winner Fabio Cannavaro as manager, declared bankruptcy last May and folded.

Corruption in Chinese Football:

The corruption, sadly, has long been a part of Chinese professional football since it starts to form in 1990s. In 1990s, Chinese Football Association decide to give the ownership of the club to private firms/owner. That means the performance of the teams will directly affect the income for its owner.

If a club got relegated, the price of the ticket, the TV board-cast fees, etc. will drop significantly. Under this circumstance, Owner will do anything they can to prevent their team from relegated, the measure they thought is not to buy players or manger to improve their performance, but rather, to bribe the referee or opposition's player, to let them "take it easy" when playing against their team.

That's only one of the reason, there. are other reasons that corruption occur. Gambling on the final result or a score of a match is alway been a part of the football. In China, it is common that the officials from Chinese Football Association to collaborate with casino owners, referee, players or clubs owner to manipulate the result of the match to maximize their own revenue.

A detail description on the events of corruption in Chinese football is explain in detail from this wikipedia page: 2003–2009 Chinese football match-fixing scandals