Guangzhou FC, China’s most profitable soccer crew and former Asian champions, have been thrown overseas’s skilled leagues due to “heavy historic debt”, the membership say. The efficient demise of the eight-time Chinese Super League (CSL) winners, as soon as managed by Marcello Lippi and in addition Fabio Cannavaro, alerts the top of an period within the home recreation in China. Dozens of Chinese golf equipment, together with fellow former CSL champions Jiangsu Suning, have folded lately in debt.
“The membership tried varied means to realize entry to the skilled league,” Guangzhou FC, previously referred to as Guangzhou Evergrande, mentioned.
“However, due to the heavy historic debt burden, the funds we raised had been inadequate to clear them.”
The Chinese Football Association (CFA) excluded Guangzhou from a listing of 49 groups included in China’s skilled leagues for 2025.
Guangzhou as soon as dominated Chinese soccer, successful seven consecutive CSL titles from 2011 to 2017 and two Asian Champions League crowns.
But they had been relegated to China’s second tier in 2022 after their majority proprietor, property builders Evergrande Real Estate Group, bumped into monetary difficulties because the nation’s property market slumped. The membership’s final title got here in 2019.
Guangzhou had invested closely in gamers, breaking China’s switch document a number of instances as Evergrande Group pumped thousands and thousands into the squad.
They paid $46 million, then a document for an Asian crew, for striker Jackson Martinez from Atletico Madrid in 2016. It was in an period of huge spending by Chinese groups.
In that interval that they had a string of illustrious international managers together with Italian World Cup winners Lippi and Cannavaro, and Brazil’s Luiz Felipe Scolari.
In 2020 the membership started building on a brand new $1.86 billion stadium that Evergrande Group mentioned would have capability for a minimum of 80,000 followers.
The challenge was cancelled in 2022 because the group racked up $300 billion in liabilities.
The membership had been renamed Guangzhou FC in 2021 after new CFA guidelines forbid groups from together with references to corporations or sponsors of their names.
Guangzhou completed third in second-tier China League One within the 2024 season, lacking out on promotion.
“We specific our sincerest apologies to followers and everybody from all walks of life which have supported the membership,” the membership mentioned of their assertion on Monday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
