Reporter Chen Yong reports With Shanghai Port's 1-4 defeat to Yokohama Mariners and Shanghai Shenhua's 0-4 defeat to Kawasaki Frontale, the Chinese Super League team has ended its journey in the 2024-2025 AFC Champions League Elite League, and Chinese Super League clubs and fans have also begun to summarize and reflect on the AFC Champions League Elite League.

The reality that has to be faced is that with the complete end of the Jinyuan football era, the competitiveness of the Chinese Super League in the AFC Champions League has declined rapidly. After the restructuring of the AFC Champions League, the strength of the Chinese Super League team in the East Asian zone is clearly positioned in the lower middle of the position, if you want to reach the top 8 in the East Asian zone, you need to do your best to add a little luck, and if you want to go further, it is extremely difficult to reach the top 8 of the AFC Champions League elite league.

Looking forward to the future, in the face of the AFC Champions League, whether the Super League will face difficulties or be at peace with the situation is a difficult choice but must be decided.

The key is foreign aid, and it is not only foreign aid

The Chinese Super League's poor record in the AFC Champions League Elite Tournament, especially the fiasco in the last two away games against Japan, is naturally the most obvious and direct reason for foreign aid. For example, Shanghai Shenhua's 0-4 defeat, the core of the front court Andre Luiz and the midfield big man Amadou were injured and absent was the key point. Of course, even if these two foreign players are healthy, Shanghai Shenhua's strength is not as good as Kawasaki Frontale, and if the personnel are neat, Shenhua's biggest possibility is to narrow the score gap. Another example is that Shandong Taishan was able to reach the quarterfinals of the AFC Champions League last season, and this season has the highest points in the Chinese Super League before the final round, which is related to the strong strength of Taishan team's front field and more suitable for anti-counterattack play.

Most teams in the Chinese Super League have been more cautious in bringing in foreign players this season, which may make the AFC Champions League in the 2025-2026 season more difficult: Shanghai Port lost Oscar; Shanghai Shenhua's newly introduced Mineiro is already below the million level and is worth only 900,000 euros; Chengdu Rongcheng's introduction of Caron is a veteran of the Chinese Super League and is worth only 400,000 euros.

The value of foreign aid is declining, reflecting the decrease in the investment level of Chinese Super League clubs, and this trend has not changed since 2019. The impact of the reduction in input is not only reflected in the level of foreign aid, but also in the choice of winter training sites. In the Jinyuan football era, most of the Chinese Super League clubs chose to go to Europe for training, and it was easier to find warm-up opponents locally, and the warm-up matches were faster and more intense, which could help the team adapt to high-intensity and fast-paced games, but now most of them will choose to train in China, and looking for a team to warm up can only be chosen nearby.

The quality of foreign aid is changing, and the quality of winter training is also affected. The overall technical and tactical level of the Chinese Super League teams is fixed in the relatively low level range, once it comes to the AFC Champions League elite league, the Chinese Super League teams obviously do not adapt to the rhythm, intensity and tactical play, which is especially evident against Japanese teams: last season, Wuhan Three Towns and Shandong Taishan both had a dense defensive situation and conceded goals, and this season is still the same. In the game against Yokohama Mariners on the 11th, Shanghai Port was torn apart by a simple pass from the opponent with a simple pass, and other Chinese Super League teams have also seen this situation many times in the AFC Champions League.

Last season's Chinese Super League as an example, the top teams of the Chinese Super League have three or five fierce games in a season, and no team in the Super League can simulate the technical and tactical play of the Japanese team. In comparison, the Chinese Super League team can still compete with South Korean or Southeast Asian teams with less elaborate tactical systems.

The competitiveness of the Chinese Super League teams is back to 14 years ago

At present, the competitiveness of Chinese Super League teams in the AFC Champions League elite league has basically returned to 14 years ago (the 2011 season and before), to be precise, it is almost the level from 2006 to 2011.

The AFC Champions League record of the Chinese Super League is actually divided into 4 stages: the first stage is from 2003 to 2005, the top 4 of Dalian Shide in 2003, the top 8 of Dalian Shide in 2004, the top 8 of Shandong Taishan in 2005, and the top 4 of Shenzhen Jianlibao; The second stage is from 2006 to 2011, Shanghai Shenhua top 8 in 2006 (group qualifier is the top 8), in 2007, 2008 and 2009, all the group stage failed, and in 2010 and 2011, Beijing Guoan and Tianjin teams qualified for the group; The third stage is from 2012 to 2020, with Chinese Super League teams reaching the top 8 and Guangzhou winning the AFC Champions League twice for 9 consecutive years, especially from 2017 to 2019, three Chinese Super League teams have qualified for the group for three consecutive years; The fourth stage is from 2021 to the present, and in the past 4 years, only Shandong Taishan has reached the top 8 of the AFC Champions League last season.

In terms of the performance of Chinese Super League teams in the AFC Champions League this season, it is clear that they are not as competitive as they were in 2003 and 2005. At that time, the local players were excellent, and the opponent's competitiveness was slightly insufficient, at least the situation in East Asia, of course, the competitiveness could not be compared with 2012 to 2020, when the Chinese Super League foreign aid was extremely strong, and the value of a foreign aid was almost equal to the total value of all the current Chinese Super League AFC Champions League teams.

The current situation is similar to that of 2006 and 2011, or slightly better, with the gap largely due to the quality of foreign aid. At this stage, the value of foreign aid is mostly maintained at the million-level level, but if you compare the level of local players, there is actually a decline. As for the next few years, the overall situation of the Chinese Super League tends to be stable, but this stability is more based on the background of government support and investment contraction, unless there is a breakthrough in the commercial operation of the Super League in the next few years, so that the club has confidence and space to increase investment, otherwise the competitiveness of the Super League is difficult to have a substantial improvement.

A problem that must be mentioned is that 2024 is actually a watershed year, in this year, the post-80s players gradually withdraw from the national team, and they also play a role in the club. As we all know, the trough of Chinese youth football is actually around the 00 age group, when the national youth once missed the U20 Asian Cup, and the national youth missed the U17 Asian Cup twice in a row. Although the post-05 generation is showing signs of recovery, the biggest problem for this group of players is that there is a serious lack of game accumulation, and in the first few years of their entry into the professional league, they have to "make up" for the lack of the youth era, and they are expected to enter the maturity period after the age of 25, and there is uncertainty in the period.

How to treat the AFC Champions League in the future?

Because of the big score defeat of Shanghai Shenhua and Shanghai Port, all parties have a pessimistic attitude towards the AFC Champions League, and even the mainstream argument has begun to change - the AFC Champions League can be played casually, and it can't be beaten anyway.

But it must be said that whether it is the 2+1 places in the 2025/2026 season or the subsequent 1+1 places, the AFC Champions League cannot be given up casually. It is a very clear fact that in the past few years, the development direction of the country's football level is centered on young people, and most of the work is carried out around this core, including the creation, recovery and improvement of various youth events, including the opening of the channel for further education, the overall planning of the calendar, and the establishment of college football majors, etc., but the country has also always attached great importance to the construction of the national team, and the reason is simple.

The national team is the face of Chinese football, the AFC Champions League is the face of the Chinese professional league, the AFC Champions League, no matter how difficult, is still to go all out, at least in the AFC Champions League elite league East Asia top 12 stage, the Chinese Super League participating teams to enter the top 8 in East Asia and work hard, as for whether they can go further, then they will do their best to resign themselves to the fate of God. In order to maintain the bottom line in the AFC Champions League, the club needs to attach great importance to it, and this attention cannot be just lip service, but has substantive measures in terms of ideological mobilization and bonus incentives, just as the national team management has also launched a series of measures. As for the arguments of the outside world, there is no need to pay too much attention to them, such as the first three consecutive defeats of the national football team in the round of 18, the arguments at that time were extremely pessimistic, but when the national team won two consecutive victories, the arguments immediately changed again.

How to improve the competitiveness of Chinese Super League clubs in the future? At the level of local players, as mentioned above, it takes a certain amount of time to wait for young players to mature, and it is difficult to improve substantially in the short term, so the only way in the next two or three seasons is to improve the level of foreign players or increase the number of foreign players. Of course, this is not an easy thing, the Chinese Football Association is interested in increasing the number of foreign aid, but it has been fully opposed by the club, in this context, the number of foreign aid in the Super League has changed from 7655 to 6555, and the cumulative number of registered foreign aid is one less. In terms of investment, Chinese Super League clubs are currently generally dependent on local governments, and it is extremely difficult to increase their own investment, and the best way is to increase the overall income of the league, which requires the state to make some adjustments at the decision-making level.

As for increasing foreign aid, theoretically the professional league needs to be further stable and healthy before it will be launched, which requires several steps: first, to solve the problem of backwater and salary arrears in the Chinese League, so as to ensure the competitiveness of the Chinese League, so that it has the ability to develop players instead of letting players be contaminated with all kinds of bad habits; Secondly, the third-level league has gradually stabilized and tended to be healthy, the China Champions League has been further improved, and the provincial and municipal leagues have gradually improved; Third, the Chinese Super League, the Chinese League and the Chinese Second Division are gradually expanding, and more job opportunities can still be given to local players under the condition of increasing foreign aid. On the basis of the above, increasing the number of foreign aid places can take into account the improvement of the level of the Chinese Super League and the cultivation of local players.

The participating teams in the professional league and the China Champions League in the last three years are: 16 + 16 + 16 + 64 in 2023, 16 + 16 + 20 + 75 in 2024, and 16 + 16 + 24 + 70 in 2025. After a steady increase in the number of professional league teams, it will enter a period of adjustment, and the Chinese Champions League will remain stable, and the scale of the professional league is expected to continue to expand until at least 2027. In other words, it may take 3 to 5 years to complete the above three steps, which is likely to be a difficult period for Chinese Super League teams in the AFC Champions League.