Deeply cherish the memory of Yan Junjun

Comrade Yan Junjun, the founder of the "Football" newspaper, passed away on March 14, 2025 due to illness at the age of 86.

Yan Junjun took the pen as the banner and the body as the soul, creating a precedent for the professionalization of Chinese sports media, and the "Football" newspaper he founded faithfully recorded the development of Chinese football in the past 50 years, and became a spiritual beacon for countless fans.

As the winner of the Special Contribution Award of the China Football News Awards, Yan Junjun is humble, honest and open-minded, and inspires younger generations with the spirit of "dare to be the first in the world", and is deeply respected by colleagues in the industry.

Yan Junjun's death is a great loss to the Chinese sports journalism community, and his contribution and influence will remain in the annals of Chinese sports history for a long time.

In the newspaper "Football" that he founded, we used words to initiate a deep commemoration and remembrance of him, which is the greatest tribute that can be expressed to this pioneer of China's sports media professionalization.

Text/Xie Yi Former editor-in-chief of "Football" newspaper and former vice president of "Guangzhou Daily" newspaper group

Lao Yan is gone, with his physical foundation and magical Hainan genes, he thought that he must be over 110 years old and may set a human record.

In Guangzhou Daily and Football Daily, for decades, everyone has only had this one word for the founder and editor-in-chief Yan Junjun: "Lao Yan", including those of us who were young back then.

The voice is "old and strict", never disobeys and is rude, everyone who understands understands, and they are as light as water between each other. The word "old" is the unique cordiality and style of the old cultural unit, it is the "Lao Yan" who is vigorous and active in everyone's minds, exquisite and decisive on all sides, and Corporal Lixian is generous and generous, never needs to sleep, and is always thinking about the expanded version of the "Lao Yan". Where has all the time gone?

"Lao Yan" has long been a famous "stone Weng" in China's strange stone collection industry. When he retired, he said that he had completed the "prescribed actions" of his life and entered the wonderful "optional actions" stage. Yesterday, I didn't know what to say to Xiaofeng, Xiaofeng just said, "My father can go in his hometown, and he has also returned a wish."

The old man has a solid leaf to return to the roots, the source of the talent, in Hainan Wanning Liji Town, Lao Yan in his later years of the second venture, here to plough "into the garden" for many years, a strange stone root carving collection museum, there are more than 1,000 pieces of his collection of strange stones, as the president of the Lingnan Strange Stone Collection Association, he was awarded the title of "Shi Weng" at the China Strange Stone Festival the year before last, which is equivalent to the industry's lifetime honor award.

▲In 2023, Yan Lao and his "entering the garden" (Photo via Hainan Daily)

In the Chinese football and press circles, since 1980, everyone has basically only one name for Yan Junjun: "Boss Yan".

The joke circulating in Guangzhou football circles is that when Liu Xiaowu bought the "Football" newspaper at the newsstand in the early 90s, the two old people in front of him had a conversation in Cantonese, one said that the "Football" newspaper was really good, and the other said that they also ran a "Guangzhou Daily" newspaper......

If there is a Hall of Fame in the two industries of Chinese football and journalism, in fact, they should erect a monument for Boss Yan and set up a "Lifetime Honor Award".

But I really don't want to talk about football anymore in front of Lao Yan. Wang Yangming said: Don't be blank in the world, how can wealth be like a glass of wine? What I want to say to Lao Yan is "Don't be a football blank head, how rich is like a thousand stones"? The thousand pillars of strange stones in the Rite Age, as well as the tropical sea breeze that gave him magical and vigorous genes, accompanied him for a lifetime, how happy Lao Yan was.

When remembering Lao Yan, the focus of my mind is: "Boss Yan", not about football, not about the Chinese team, I just want to talk about "Boss Yan" in the media and news industry.

▲During the interview of the French World Cup in 1998, Yan Junjun (second from right) took a group photo with Lei Qingfeng, Xie Yi and Liang Jiajian, reporters of the "Football" newspaper at that time (from left to right).

The reason why Lao Yan has become the "Yan boss" in the football news industry lies in his bold and pioneering business style, which is good at dancing with long sleeves. In the seventies and eighties, many of my predecessors had a deeper understanding than me, but after experiencing the atmosphere of the news media in different eras, I really had mixed feelings about Lao Yan's contribution to journalism and enterprise management, and Lao Yan's hardships and manoeuvres in starting a business within the system as a middle-level cadre of a public institution.

In fact, with the Internet memory, with DeepSeek, where else do you need a plaque? Regarding the two keywords of "Football" newspaper and Yan Junjun, everyone searched on the Internet, but in fact, I don't need to say anything anymore. In 2009, I wrote in the special issue of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the "Football" newspaper, and now I can still search the full text on the Internet, and the summary of the eight characteristics of the "Football" newspaper is carried out. What kind of historical position did he have in the history of Chinese journalism and football development? (Attached is a link to the article "Forever Strong Football Newspaper", please click at the end of the article to read the original article)

▲ Yan Lao won the Special Contribution Award of the first China Football News Awards

In the press world, some people often compare Boss Yan with Chu Shijian. I have personally experienced the 20-year history of the "Football" newspaper from 1991 to 2001 when Lao Yan retired, and my personal experience is: in the Guangdong press circles at the forefront of reform and opening up, in the "Guangzhou Daily" newspaper group, which is a pioneer in the marketization of China's media, Lao Yan, who is full of reform cells and often makes self-selected actions, how lucky he is in his life! Hainan gave him a magical life gene and a happy old age, and Guangzhou was a hot spot for his infinite vitality.

The remembrance of Lao Yan is actually the remembrance of the youth of one or two generations. Song Kai, the new chairman of the Football Association, is our student fan in the 80s, he appeared at the Chinese Football Work Conference last year, and at the beginning of his first long speech, he specifically mentioned his deep relationship with the "Football" newspaper, telling how he began to love football as a fan from reading the "Football" newspaper for 4 cents.

Chairman Song Kai's speech was sincere and sincere, without any official clichés, and people who like football felt very cordial and heartfelt after listening to it. Personally, I have also noticed that in the past year, the Chinese Football Association has communicated closely with the media and fans, and the matches of national teams at all levels are still touching and hopeful.

▲The first issue of the "Football" newspaper

Needless to say, as a sport that ordinary people care about and love, the relationship between the main body of football and the public, including the media, has always been a sensitive interactive relationship. Lao Yan and we have experienced football reports for twenty or thirty years, the "Football" newspaper was once nicknamed the unpopular "wild newspaper", and my career is constantly "fighting" with the Chinese Football Association. With the changes in the media ecology and the change in the work style of the Chinese Football Association, we are happy to see that the interactive relationship between the public and football, the Football Association and the media is becoming healthier and healthier, and more and more each other is growing together, and this atmosphere is not easy to come by.

Avoiding falling into an atmosphere of rigidity, quick success, resentment, and non-communication, and forming a mechanism of good interaction and win-win cooperation is obviously an extremely important topic and consensus that should be reached in current football and even society.

What Lao Yan and my generation experienced may have been a reform and opening up in the Chinese media and football world. In the past few decades, every aspect of Chinese society has made tremendous progress and development, and while deeply remembering the old Yan and Yan bosses, we earnestly hope that China's football and journalism will be better. What is needed is the efforts of a new generation of people, and Boss Yan's unique innovation and development, bold and unbridled pungent style, is really worthy of being carried forward by media people and football people, and passed on from generation to generation:

"The king set the Central Plains Day in the north, and the family sacrifice did not forget to tell Na Weng."