Where did you get the revenue for the CSL teams from? The Forbes link you provided earlier has drastically different numbers? Not saying your numbers are wrong, just curious as to where the numbers are coming from.
I was using income number from the other source which I'd already plugged in. Thanks for the correction. Can you delete the post above? The problem now is that the payroll numbers come from a different source to the revenue. Source: Forbes 2016
I mean it is obvious that he would. Unless a CSL teams backs up trucks full of money to him. Mexico soccer star "Chicharito" declares his preference between MLS and China Shit sponsorship opportunities would probably be a lot better in MLS than China (He already gets massive endorsement money). http://www.cbssports.com/soccer/new...eclares-his-preference-between-mls-and-china/
Just a question, how much of the payroll for each CSL team is tied up in their top 3 players? I'm guessing it's probably close to 90%.
Probably close to that, but they also overpay for their local players. The China NT svcks balls, paying a NT player 500K per year does not make him better than MLS paying a US NT player 250K. Unless they get rid of foreign player limits (or increase them) they will "waste" lots of payroll on crappy Chinese players.
I didn't intend to say your original source was wrong, I was just wondering what it was. There was just a rather large disparity between the two figures and I was curious if the other source mentioned how they got their numbers. Forbes's numbers are inferred rather than actual and if your other source's information is correct, that would imply that Forbes's valuation of the teams is off as well.. Take Jiangsu as an example, if their revenue is $180 million per season, then Forbes's valuation of $114 million is probably quite a bit off, but Forbes's valuation makes sense if their revenue is only $36 million.
So all the MLS and CSL revenue numbers I've used for the calculation below are sourced from Forbes. The Premier League numbers below are from the Guardian, sourced from club accounts for the season 2013/14. PAYROLL AS % REVENUE Hebel - 268% Shangdong - 238% Tianjin - 173% Jiangsu - 172% Shanghai S - 159% Shanghai G - 148% Guangzhou - 139% Liaoning - 136% Beijing - 113% Chongqing - 106% QPR - 85% Swansea - 80% Sunderland - 76% West Brom - 73% Aston Villa - 72% Chelsea - 68% Crystal Palace - 67% Hull City - 67% Everton - 62% West Ham - 60% NYC FC - 58% Toronto - 58% Arsenal - 56% Liverpool - 56% Leicester - 55% Man City - 55% Tottenham - 52% Man Utd - 51% Newcastle - 50% Burnley - 37% Orlando - 33% LA Galaxy - 31% Houston - 23% New England - 22% Kansas City - 21% San Jose - 19% Portland - 18% Seattle - 17%
Aside from attendance what is the larger cultural attitude towards soccer in China? Is the domestic game an automatic big sports story on any given day? Are there a bunch of Chinese players who are household names? If they have more of a built-in and less fractured acceptance compared to the U.S. it has to be a matter of time before CSL is clearly on a level above MLS.
China seems to be fairly similar to the US with regards to soccer. Soccer is popular there, it's just that people are fans of the big clubs in foreign leagues and, prior to spending spree, didn't seem too interested in CSL. In fact, the rampant match fixing and corruption in the CSL's predecessor drove a lot of people away from the Chinese league. It took several years of cracking down on the corruption to get fans to start coming back, but now that the teams are spending crazy money, it seems to be attracting fans.. The question is, with the Chinese government stepping in and getting ready to put a cap on spending, will this continue, or will interest go away as the expensive players go away.
Soccer hasn't been that popular for very long though. As recently as the early 1990s, it had only regional popularity in China. It was wildly popular in the northeastern provinces (former Manchuria) and in the Shanghai area, moderately popular in Beijing and ij Guangdong Province, and not popular anywhere else. The availability of European soccer on satellite TV popularized the sport elsewhere in the 1990s. Note that the traditional hotbeds, former Manchuria and greater Shanghai, are still the birthplaces of around half of the national team, despite having only 12% of China's population. Those are the only areas where domestic club soccer is as popular as European soccer.
The strict foreign limit is like a ball and chain on the league. It fosters too much senseless internal competition for who can sign the best Chinese players. Just this week a Chinese player (Chengdong Zhang) got sold for over $20 million. He's a good test case for what that actually means since he did have a promising Euro career a few years ago. He was on solid if unspectacular career path. Started in Portuguese 2nd division and he gradually worked his way into Portuguese 1st division and ultimately to a respectable club in Germany. His career path was that of a player that would maybe get sold for $2-3 million within Europe. So essentially China is paying about 1000% above international market value for his rights. If they relaxed their foreign limits to about 7 players, they could become one of the better leagues in the world. And in the long run it helps the Chinese player too because they're training and competing with better quality professionals.
Well they are going the opposite direction. Still 5 foreigners but only 3 can be on the field at the same time. 2 have to be U23. No more Asian foreigner reserved spot. ⚽ | El balompié chino tomó una medida para hacer crecer su liga.https://t.co/7n47d5RBEm— TUDN USA (@TUDNUSA) January 15, 2017
In England attendances have traditionally been based on turnstile clicks and most clubs still use them. These number are used by the police to help with crowd control. It now looks like some of the big clubs are reporting tickets sold. One of the reasons people that some seats are empty may be because travel agents by tickets in bulk and don't sell them all. I'm not sure. I know Chinese clubs are ranked highly in various world club rankings but the fact they're ranked above Sampdoria, Genoa, Udinese, Stoke City, Celta Vigo, Eibar, Mainz makes me question them. And MLS talent is split pretty evenly across the teams rather than being concentrated in the top 2 or 3. I wondered why you think that. Do you think teams in Saudi Arabia and Dubai are better than their Costa Rican counterparts? (A Chinese club won in 1998 by the way ). That school costs a small fortune to get into and as we know, middle-class kids are less likely to become world class players. I don't think China is going to develop a world class national team until their players are playing in the top leagues in the world. Look where they are in AFC WC qualifying.
I watched a couple of their AFC qualifiers, and there's definitely some quality there. Despite not having many points, they were generally competitive in all the games they played. Remember that just to get to the final round of qualifying is a step in the right direction for them. That was hardly a given in previous qualification campaigns
In qualifying for World Cup 2018, AFC has 12 teams in the second group stage. In qualifying for World Cup 2014, AFC had 10 teams in the second group stage. If you rank the 10 teams eliminated in the first group stage (which had 5 groups of 4) by points and then goal differential, China was the second best team eliminated then, ranking them 12th in AFC. AFC had the same amount of teams in each group stage in qualifying for World Cups 2014 and 2010, and using the same ranking method China was 14th in AFC qualifying for World Cup 2010. In qualifying for World Cup 2006, AFC had 8 groups of 4 with the winners advancing to 2 groups of 4. China ended by beating Hong Kong 7:0, but was eliminated on the goals scored tiebreaker by Kuwait beating Malaysia 6:1. China allowed 1 goal in 6 games. I wonder if that's the fewest goals allowed by a team in a qualifying group they didn't advance from. Ranking the teams that didn't win their group by points and then goal differential ranked China 9th in AFC qualifying for World Cup 2006.
The AFC Champions League is rather uneven, largely because of its geographic split (which is very understandable given the travel expenses involved). The top teams in the East Region and the top teams in the West Region are of similar quality, but the East Region is much deeper.
Kalinic rejects offer from China to stay with Fiorentina. A very rare situation for a player to reject that kind of money. http://www.football-italia.net/97170/kalinic-ive-rejected-china
I am sure it happens more than we hear about. Sometimes it takes a few attempts, I believe the Galaxy made 1 or 2 offers at different times to Dos Santos before he said yes.
And people complain about how much MLS changes its rules. According to Sina Sports, CSL foreign player quota rules suddenly changed again - of 5 foreign players in squad, one must be Asian— Wild East Football (@wildeastfootbal) February 3, 2017
5 is the limit, only 3 can be on the field at the same time, before they got rid of the Asian player requirement, they brought it back, so 4+1 with only 3 on the field.
As someone who follows the club game in both confederations rather closely (I used to live in the US) - yes, I do rate the likes of Al Hilal and Al Ain higher than Saprissa or Alajuelense. They retain the top domestic talent while the likes of Saprissa get raided by MLS for example. But as @Elninho pointed out, the CSL clubs play in the East of the AFC Champions League. And the East is no doubt a cut above the CCL, at least in my opinion. PS: The last time a Chinese club won the ACL pre-Guangzhou was Liaoning in 1990. You need to give it some time. Investment into the youth player development just started.
The player rules have been handled very poorly in the lead-up to the season. Just replicate the 3+1 AFC competition rules. That's the easiest. Anyway, Alexandre Pato is the latest high-profile signing for the CSL. For those who say that money is the only reason for going to China, Rio Ferdinand offers a different outlook: Some players want to experience a very different culture. Deadline day: Chinese Super League flexes financial muscle during January transfer window