Exactly. greenlion, I admire your passion for CSL and Chinese football in general, but let's face it, it's crap. Look at the CSL scoring leaders last year, all foreigners. Also, how often do CSL teams get deep into the AFC Champions League? Not very often at all. Has a CSL team ever won the AFC Champions League? Never. The only players worth watching are the foreigners, so what does that tell you about our players? Is the national team getting better or worse every year? I think worse as we can't even make it to the knock out stage in the Asian Cup anymore, not to mention not even advancing to the final stages of world cup qualifications. I don't know what needs to happen in Chinese Football. It needs a revolution. I have no clue. All I know is, it's not worth watching and not worth hoping for. I will still follow the CSL just because it's my country, but it is dissapointing.
here is my point of view, yes if you compare CSL with European and South American leagues, it is crap, compare with K-League and J-League, we are not that good, but the fact is CSL is becoming better and better than itself,I can't agree with the opinion like CSL is getting worse, 10 years ago? I'm quite sure at that time very few foreigners playing here and the only good team is Dalian, who plays slow and physical football. a striker called Hao haidong ruled the league and his only adventage is speed. foreigner is also part of the league and if you look as J-League and K-league, the scorer table is ruled by foreigners as well. the scorer is no more ruled by players like Li Jinyu, Han Pen etc means we have imported better foreigners than before. and about the performance in ACL, Shanghai is the only team that sucks every time, Beijing, Changchun, & Shandong all finished in the 2nd place of the group in their last ACL appearence, that is in 2007 and 1008 if you remember. and under the new regulation of ACL, they'll qualify to next round. in 2005 Shenzhen reached semi-final, and in 2004, Dalian also reached simi-final. you can't call it a bad performance and actually CSL is ranked as the third best Asian leagues by AFC.you may criticize the poor performance by CSL clubs against J-League sides in first two rounds of the ACL, but you must notice that the J-Leagues side had never win a single ACC or ACL match in china since 1999. speaking of Fighting spirit I think both Tianjin and Beijing have showed that against Japanese teams. it's a pity that i've already realised most of the chinese posters in this forum seldom follow the CSL, I dare say seb and Shingkei (who is a very famous Hongkong poster) knows the current situation better than those "Chinese fans". Damn, it's a league with a long history and most of the clubs had located in their home city for 50 years, not the K-League who found new teams with no history and no fans to play. the national team? you may notice I seldom post in Team China related threads because currentlly the are hopeless. most of the Domestic Chinese fans shares the same attitude with me. that's why so many people following the CSL more than Team China. we believe if the CSL continue improve itself as we've seen in recently years. the National team will be better and could bring us real hopes by then. and I'll back to support them but before that, dont talk team China with me, sorry. the CFA used to invest everything into team china that nearly killed the league, I'm glad to see they finally realised the importance of CSL and seems are they are doing right things recentlly. I'm satisfied with the current situation.
Just look at the attendance for CSL for the past 10 years and we can see how much the league has improved. Look, there is no hope in CSL. Occasionally a few CSL clubs will do well in the AFC Champions League, only occasionally. Our national team, which consists of mostly players from the CSL, all stink. Just look at our national team's performance. How do we improve our national team? The only way CFA can do this is to ship young talents, as young as 18 or 19 overseas to Europe and train them there. If they stay in the CSL, they will stink like the league. Of course, I want CSL to do well, but over the past 7 years of following the league and the national team closely, I see absolutely no hope whatsoever.
Well said Green. Chinese fans need to realise that the foundation of every national team is a strong national league. Just look at Korea and Japan - their leagues are well-managed and on the up, and their national teams now world cup regulars. It's no coincidence that south korea have been at every world cup since 1986, and they set their pro league up in 1983, and Japan at every WC since 98, and they set their league up in 1993.
Let's notice some of the fact between 1999 jia-A season, which is considers as best season of Jia-A, and 2008 CSL season. in 1999 Hao haidong was banned by AFC for 1 year that lead the collapse of Giant Dalian in league table,they finished 9th in League Table Top Scorer 1999 1 Qu Shengqing Liaoning FC 17 2 Mark Williams (RSA) Chongqing Longxin 12 3 Marcelo Sergipano (BRA) Shanghai Shenhua 11 4 Su Maozhen Shandong Luneng 11 5 Yu Genwei Tianjin Teda 10 6 Edvaldo Goncalves Pereira (BRA) Shenyang Haishi 10 7 Yao Xia Sichuan Quanxing 10 Team of the year Position Footballer Club Nationality GK Gao Jianbin (1) Sichuan Quanxing China PR DF Zhang Enhua (3) Dalian Wanda China PR DF Li Weifeng (1) Shenzhen Ping'an China PR DF Xie Feng (2) Shenzhen Ping'an China PR DF Cheng Gang (1) Qingdao Hainiu China PR MF Li Tie (1) Liaoning Fushun China PR MF Ma Mingyu (3) Sichuan Quanxing China PR MF Zhang Xiaorui (1) Tianjin Teda China PR MF Li Xiaopeng (1) Shandong Taishan China PR FW Su Maozhen (1) Shandong Taishan China PR FW Qu Shengqing (1) Liaoning Fushun China PR 7 players with 10+ goals and 3 of them are foreigners. in this year the best foreigner player is Dalian's brazil striker Orlando Bernades da Silva who scored 9 goals in the league, He earns 300k USD a year in dalian and before he comes to China he played in a brazilian Sirie B club. None of the foreigners was selected to the team of the year because the prize doesn't allowed for foreigners at that time. Top Scorer CSL 2008 1. Eber Luis (BRA) Tianjin Teda 14 2. Johnson Macaba (ANG) Shenzhen Xiangxue 13 3. E. Olisadebe (POL) Henan Jianye 12 3. Ramirez (HON) Guangzhou Yiyao 12 5. Du Zhenyu Changchun Yatai 10 6. Valdo (BRA) Hangzhou Greentown 10 Team of the year Position Footballer Club Nationality GK Yang Zhi (2) Beijing Guo'an China PR DF Cao Yang (2) Tianjin Teda China PR DF Alejandro Cichero (1) Shandong Luneng Venezuela DF Du Wei (2) Shanghai Shenhua China PR DF Xin Feng (1) Shaanxi Baorong China PR MF Emil Martínez (1) Shanghai Shenhua Honduras MF Du Zhenyu (3) Changchun Yatai China PR MF Tao Wei (3) Beijing Guo'an China PR MF Aleksandar Zivkovic (3) Shandong Luneng Serbia FW Johnson (1) Shenzhen Shangqingyin Angola FW Emmanuel Olisadebe (1) Henan Jianye Poland in this year 6 players scored 10+ goals and 5 of them are forigners, Olisadebe is a 2002 World Cup player and earns 1m USD a year in Henan. in team of the year Aleksandar Zivkovic was one of the members of the Jubilo dynasty in J-League, and Emil Martines, MVP odf CSL was one of the best player in Honduras National team
haha i think it is asking too much for any Chinese layperson to be like you greenlion, but i appreciate seb and you for providing insider news in english. Most can gather a good idea of how the system is progressing without the need to watch every single CSL game.... i don't even live in china but i follow the news quite often.....the acl is good enough to see the 'best' teams in china v asia as a good measure of the league and definitely more entertaining. Maybe I'll watch more csl if it gets more professional structure like J-league. More grassroots and professional training not so much corruption, lazy attitude and chaos i see happen so much... yea, and i agree with CFF we need something changed in our core, but i think i has to change the culture of profi team sports. We have profi league since 1993 or 94 something but we've progressing really slow and fundamentally the quality of football hasn't improved. Maybe just that China is still a poor country and still communist organization running sports.
Group E Ulsan 1-0 Beijing Nagoya 1-1 Newcastle Beijing's 18 matches unbeaten run in official matches come to a end. in Nagoya match, a very good start for Newcastle with a fast goal. and for Nagoya, they played a good second half. Table 1 Nagoya 5 2 Beijing 4 (+1) 3 Newcastle 4 (0) 4 Ulsan 3 Group G Shanghai 2-1 Suwon SAFFC 1-4 Kashima former Shanghai player Li Weifeng became star player of Suwon, in this match we saw him playing not only as a defender, but a organiser and a scorer. SAFFC lost their third ACL match at home. Table 1 Suwon 6 (+4) 2 Kashima 6 (+2, 7 goals) 3 Shanghai 6 (+2, 6 goals) 4 SAFFC 0
Li Weifeng bowed his thanks to Shenhua fans and the club after he scored, just before the match shenhua presented him with the No.23 shirt, that was his number in Shanghai. in other hands, Lee Jang-Soo's future in Beijing Guo'an becomes undefined, the boss of Guo'an was really angry abouth the loss in Ulsan and recent performance of the team. He had questioned Lee's ability on the media just after the Ulsan match.
was that bow more of a mockery since he just scored on Shanghai turf? Why would Shenhua present him with a jersey? He only played a few years and wasn't that good.
I don´t think it was meant as a mockery, it was more like him trying to show respect and gratitude to the shenhua fans. Immediately after he scored he was running and he was happy as hell, but u could see a few seconds after he realised that he shouldn´t celebrate too happily, hence the bows I guess
Shandong drew 1-1 with FC Seoul and are now on the verge of qualifying to the knockout stages. Although if it weren´t for damned linesman Shandong might have won it by 2-0. A first half corner by Seoul was cleared off the line by a defender but the linesman called a goal for Seoul. In the second half the very same linesman called offside on Lv Zheng when he was clearly onside by atleast half a metre, and had he not been called offside he and 2 other Shandong players would´ve been past all defenders with only Seouls GK to beat. But the 1-1 result was good enough and Shandong pretty much only need to draw their next game against Gamba at home to qualify.(I say that as I expect a win against Sriwijaya)
Hi there Puckodum, while you are 100 % right about that linesman 2-0 to Shandong would have been a bit of a flattering result for Shandong. Especially when you consider that Shandong looked like they were playing for a draw throughout the game. Where was Antar and Peng? cause I didn't even see them play. The entire first half from Shandong they had one chance from a set piece and though they played better in the second half they still had what three or four chances in the entire game. Having said that did you see how none of the Seoul team thought it was a goal and continued to play on. Looking back at the reply I think I saw one Seoul player half hearted raise his arm for a goal. Also have a look at the reaction from the Seoul coach, see how he thinks it was a save rather then a goal. Anyway it was a good result by Shangdong
Han Peng was suspended because of yellow cards. Antar joined the team after the registeration of the group stage, but he can play in the next round.
Seoul also missed aome good chances so I think 1-1 is a good result for Shandong, now they just need a win in next two matchs to secure their place in Round of 16
HT Suwon S.B. 2 - 1 Shanghai Shenhua Suwon's 2nd is clearly offside. Once again the refs favor korean side.
Wow Hernan Barcos missed a crucial penalty, I had a deja vu feeling when he stepped up, somehow I knew he´d gonna miss. I had the exact same feeling when Huang Bowen stepped up against Ulsan.....