Super League Five Foreign Aid Report: Uniformity and Utilization Determine Results

Reporter Chen Yong reports This season, the Chinese Super League has implemented a new policy of 5 foreign aid. However, due to the uneven quality of foreign aid, as well as factors such as injuries, suspensions and foreign replacements, the use of foreign aid by 16 teams5 varies greatly. Most teams don't really use up the 5 starting slots, and 4 starts is a habit for more teams. Of course, the help of 5 foreign players to the team's results is also obvious, Shanghai Port is the only team in the Chinese Super League to use 5 foreign players to start more than half of the games (19 games), and they finally won the championship.

Shandong Taishan has become the only team in the Chinese Super League that has not started with 5 foreign aid places in one game due to serious injuries to foreign striker Zeka and central defender Judson, coupled with other foreign aid injuries and replacements. Shandong Taishan has as many as 28 games with 3 or less foreign aids, and there are even 6 games with 1 foreign aid starting lineup. This led to a large fluctuation in Shandong Taishan's performance, and finally fell behind early in the championship process. Nantong Zhiyun, who only started 1 game with 5 foreign players in the whole season, was relegated at the bottom.

Although this season's Chinese Super League has increased the number of foreign players to 5 at the same time, and 16 teams have registered 5 foreign aid places at the beginning of the season, it is difficult for each team to use up the 5 foreign aid starting places in actual combat. Of the 16 teams in the Chinese Super League, only Shanghai Port has more than half of the 15 foreign players who started more than 15 games (19 games). In addition, only 5 teams have started more than 10 games with 5 foreign players, and as many as 6 teams with 5 foreign players starting 5 games or less. The Chinese Super League has a total of 240 games in the whole season, and among the 480 starting lineups, only 123 sets of 5 foreign aid starters, accounting for only 25.6% of the 5 foreign aid starters, which shows that the teams are far from making good use of the 5 foreign aid policy.

Shanghai Shenhua ultimately fell short in the championship process, largely because of the underutilization of 5 foreign aid. Manafa suffered a serious injury late in the season, leaving the team with almost four foreign players available. Shanghai Shenhua only started 8 games with 5 foreign players, 11 fewer than Shanghai Port. If Shanghai Shenhua's five foreign aides can start a few more games at the same time, they may be able to grasp the initiative to win the championship earlier. Wuhan Three Towns ranked seventh in the Super League at the beginning of the season with 5 foreign aid value, but because they only used 5 foreign aid in 5 games, plus they sold Enrique in the middle of the season to cash out, they only won the 11th place in the Chinese Super League, and the record ranking was lower than the 5 foreign aid value ranking, which is one of the typical examples of failing to make full use of the starting potential of 5 foreign aid. Beijing Guoan only had 4 games in the whole season with 5 foreign starters, although they won 3 of them, with a winning rate of 75%, but they still failed to achieve better results because of the small number of 5 foreign starters (ranked 13th). Shandong Taishan, which has never used 5 foreign aid starters, fell to fifth place, and Shenzhen Xinpeng City, Meizhou Hakka (3 games) and Nantong Zhiyun (1 game), which are ranked in the bottom two, three or four of the Super League using 5 foreign aid starters, also ranked in the bottom three of the Chinese Super League.

The failure to use up the 5 foreign aid quotas led to the majority of the 4 foreign aid starters in the Chinese Super League. 4 Foreign players made a total of 191 starts, accounting for 39.8% of the total (480 starting lineups). 3 foreign aid starts 115 times, 2 foreign aid starts 39 times, 1 foreign aid starts 11 times, and 1 time is an all-Chinese start. The number of starters of the Super League 3 foreign aid and less foreign aid reached 166, accounting for more than 1/3! Shandong Taishan, which has been plagued by foreign aid injuries, has only 2 of 4 foreign aid starts, as many as 12 games with only 2 foreign aid starts, and 6 games with only 1 foreign aid start. Although the four foreign aid starters won all two games, due to the fact that there were too few games in the 4 and 5 foreign aid starts (the bottom of the Chinese Super League), even if the local players filled the big hole of the shortage of foreign aid, they still only won 13 games in the end, and failed to complete the goal of qualifying for the AFC Champions League from the Chinese Super League.

Shanghai Port is the biggest beneficiary of the 5 foreign aid policy, winning 16 of the 19 games in the whole season, with a winning rate of 84.2%. Of the eight teams in the first half of the region, Chengdu Rongcheng (10 games), Henan (11 games) and Tianjin Jinmen Tigers (13 games) with more than 10 foreign starters also got the results they wanted. Chengdu Rongcheng, which ranks only twelfth in the Super League in terms of foreign aid value, entered the AFC Champions League next season as desired, Tianjin Jinmen Tigers, who ranked eleventh in the Super League in terms of foreign aid value, won the sixth place, and Henan team, which ranked tenth in the Super League in terms of foreign aid value, finally successfully entered the top half of the region.

Qingdao Manatee (10 games) and Cangzhou Lions (14 games), who have started more than 10 games with foreign aid, have all survived the brutal relegation competition. Among the relegation teams, the Cangzhou Lions, who use the most 5 foreign aids, are the biggest beneficiaries. The team won 7 games with 6 games from 5 foreign starters, and the Cangzhou Lions started 5 consecutive games from the 2nd to the 6th round of the Chinese Super League, with 4 wins, 1 draw and 13 points, laying a solid foundation for relegation. After that, the Cangzhou Lions only won a total of 3 wins in the 24 rounds of the league, which shows the importance of using 5 foreign players to grab points at the beginning of the season.

Whether it is a championship, AFC Champions League or relegation team, the six teams of the Chinese Super League with more than 10 starters with 5 foreign players have achieved the goal at the beginning of the season, which is enough to prove that making full use of the starting advantage of 5 foreign players is the basis for achieving better results. Although the winning rate of 5 foreign aid starts may not be high, for example, Henan team has 2 wins in 11 games with 5 foreign aids, and Qingdao Manatee has 2 wins in 10 games with 5 foreign aids, but the two teams still rely on as many foreign players as possible to get more points.

In the second half of the season, due to the replacement of foreign aid, injuries and other reasons, Cangzhou Lions, Meizhou Hakka, and Wuhan Three Towns could not even get together the nominal 5 foreign aids. Although Shandong Taishan's Zeka returned to the team, he only made 4 appearances in the end. The Cangzhou Lions won three consecutive games in the last 8 relegation sprints of the Chinese Super League, 2 of which were started by 5 foreign players. Oscar missed the last 6 league games, Cangzhou Lions only got 5 points, and the thrilling relegation result also proved the importance of 5 foreign players to the relegation team.

This season, the 5 foreign players in the Super League have not been fully utilized, but the positive correlation between the number of foreign starters and the number of wins is obvious. It is believed that next season, the Chinese Super League teams will use up as many starting places as possible for 5 foreign players, strive to grab points earlier and more, and lay the foundation for different season goals.