#87 What happened to all that money being pumped into Chinese soccer?
Soccer 101
TSS
4.9 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Five years ago, Antonio Conte, Arsene Wenger, and many more notable figures were worried about the looming giant wading into the world of football: China.
Chinese investors were buying into European clubs and Chinese teams were spending astronomical amounts to bring medium-to-big name players to the Chinese Super League. But today, things are drastically different. What happened to all that money, how did it work out for the development of the Chinese domestic game, and where do they go from here? Graham, Ryan, and Taylor are here with some answers!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Soka 101, the podcast where we scratched the soccer question itches that you never knew you had. |
| 0:22.2 | To quote early 2000s, alt rockers stained, it's been a while since we've been on the feed, |
| 0:28.2 | but we're back with a hot topic to discuss. No, that's not the hot topic where Stained fans bought |
| 0:33.2 | all their clothes, it's this one. The Chinese Super League. |
| 0:38.5 | What happened there? |
| 0:42.7 | Less than a decade ago, Chinese soccer was poised to become a global beaimov. |
| 0:44.5 | David Beckham became a league ambassador. |
| 0:48.6 | Clubs were paying outrageous transfer fees and salaries for players like Oscar, |
| 0:49.6 | Paulineo and Hulk. |
| 0:58.9 | Carlos Tevez, which was reportedly earning over $800,000 a week, while Fabio Canaverro was earning around $15 million a year as a coach. |
| 1:04.5 | Chinese President Xi wanted to make China a global superpower in the world's biggest game. |
| 1:07.4 | But now, it seems the bubble has burst. |
| 1:12.2 | A lot of the big imported stars have left due to salary caps and import taxes. Big teams, some of them have gone bust. Salaries that many teams have gone unpaid. And the league |
| 1:16.9 | has not become a global player as yet. So what happened? My name is Ryan Bailey. Joining me to |
| 1:23.4 | answer that question is Taylor Rockwell. Hello. Hello, I'm excited. It's good to be back. It's good |
| 1:28.3 | to have Soccer 101 back up and running, part of the Athletic Podcast Network. And I'm excited to talk |
| 1:32.4 | about this topic because I remember when it felt like, oh, wow, China is going to be the next |
| 1:37.2 | world power when it comes to football. I'm not quite as confident of that these days. |
| 1:41.9 | I'm not either. Graham Rutherland. hello, sir. Are you confident of that? |
| 1:46.2 | Not at this moment, no. But as Taylor references there, there was a time where, and I think |
| 1:51.9 | we'll discuss this in depth a bit more, but people like Arson Venger, Antonio Conte, they were |
| 1:57.5 | all quite fearful that, obviously, from a Premier League perspective, that China was going |
... |
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