Guangzhou F.C.

My current goal is to cover as many East of England clubs as possible, including those playing against @IpswichTown (the Fulham post is a little late coming —like that equaliser). However, a news story this morning sent me on a complete tangent – far, far away from East Anglia, and to the Far East instead. Specifically, to the Southern Chinese province of Guangdong and Guangzhou FC (@GZEvergrandeFC), who were just expelled from the league. There's a fascinating story behind this, so let’s #GetTheBadgeIn and see what’s happening in the world of Chinese football.

Firstly, let's establish some geography—Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong (formerly Canton), is situated above Hong Kong. Guangdong is one of the provinces around the Pearl River Estuary with a combined population of 86 million—20 million more than the UK in just one urban area. So, keep that in mind next time someone in Beccles refuses planning permission to convert a garage into an AirBnB one day and moans about Britian falling behind the next. You can’t be both powerful and provincial.

Back to Guangzhou: they are China's most successful team, winning multiple Super League titles and two AFC Champions League titles against teams from Australia, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc. They were founded in 1954, at a time in China when anything that wasn’t farming, welding, or chanting phrases from Mao’s Little Red Book was deemed as truly suspicious behaviour. Donning some shorts and kicking a pig’s bladder around a field while talking of your love for European players would have certainly got you an entry in the local CCP’s bad books.

Since their formation however, they've undergone various ownership changes. Similar to English teams historically linked to local businesses (e.g., Leiston FC from Garrett and Sons, Braintree FC from Crittall Windows, Barnet FC from Alston Works), Chinese teams have also been associated with companies. However, creating teams in the 1950s was challenging due to the absence of independent companies under Communism, and names like “645th Agricultural Commune Rovers FC” aren’t catchy. So, the connection is very different (and in a way, more depressingly modern). As capitalism took off in the 1980s, large Chinese companies, often supported by state funds or monopolies, began acquiring teams as personal assets.

In 1993, Guangzhou was acquired by the Apollo Group, a large Chinese conglomerate, and renamed 'Guangzhou Apollo.' By 2010, Evergrande Real Estate Group had taken over, rebranding the team as Guangzhou Evergrande.

Evergrande invested heavily; The club recruited top Chinese players, bringing some back from European clubs like PSV Eindhoven, and signed Brazilian Muriqui for a record £2.5m. These and subsequent signings propelled them up the leagues, and they debuted in the AFC Champions League in 2012. In 2012 they also opened the world’s largest residential football academy – a factory farm for Chinese football talent. As unsavoury as this sounds, they use the same strategy to produce Olympians – and they’re pretty good at that. So, watch this space…

The badge's red symbolises luck in Chinese culture, while the gold represents wealth—which I think we can agree are features of most successful teams. The tiger's head, reflecting the South China Tiger, an endangered native species, adds extra cultural symbolism to the badge. Despite my initial fears when I first saw it, it actually has some deep-rooted symbolism and is one the locals can rightly be proud of.

So, what’s gone wrong?

Money. Evergrande is in trouble. It borrowed and spent big in real estate during the late 2010s when the property prices were going through the roof. All those mega cities and towns you see with high rise flats as far as the eye can see – that was Evergrande. It was the Chinese miracle. The modern wonder of the world. Nothing could stop the rise of China.

And then the market went bust. And took Evergrande (and potentially all of China), down with it.

In 2022 Evergrande owed $300bn. A quick Google tells me that is the same as the GDP of Finland. You really need to screw your accounts up to have to turn around and say ‘Er, sorry boss, I might have forgotten to carry the 1 – and now we owe a Finland’.

Evergrande’s founder, Hui Ka Yan, formerly China’s richest man, is now under investigation and plans for their new stadium – Guangzhou Football Park – a planned 100,000 seater stadium with mind blowing architecture (Google it – omg) has been cancelled.

The Club has this year fallen behind with its own debt repayments and has been unable to pay salaries. As a result the Chinese FA have booted them out of the league.

The South Chinese Tigers will undoubtedly rise again, but for the time being, they are in the red – and not the lucky kind.