Chinese Super League
Alex Teixeira stars as Jiangsu Suning defeat Guangzhou Evergrande in the championship play-off stage final
Ayear like no other provided a surprise champion in the Chinese Super League as Jiangsu Suning won their maiden championship in a campaign truncated by the coronavirus.
The team from China’s ancient capital of Nanjing prevailed 2-1 on aggregate over two legs at a neutral stadium against defending champions Guangzhou
Evergrande. Italian international Eder and former Shakhtar Donetsk playmaker Alex Teixeira did the damage to bring home only the club’s second major trophy after its 2015 Chinese FA Cup win.
Back in January, pre-COVID, few would have predicted a new name on the trophy this year. However, unlike their European counterparts, most leagues in East Asia were in the midst of their close season when the coronavirus struck,
which minimised disruption, and in China’s case made the chances of an upset more likely in 2020 due to format changes.
Originally slated for a late February kick-off, CSL 2020 was put on hold as China was paralysed with the outbreak of COVID-19. For months many doubted the season would begin at all, given that extreme caution is the hallmark of Chinese officialdom. However, with the virus more or less contained, the first round finally kicked off four months late in July.
With so much time lost, the Chinese FA, no strangers to making all manner of sudden and bizarre rule changes during normal times, put this ability to good use to come up with a genuinely creative format to cram games in. The 16-team league was split into two groups, each group being based in one city. Teams played each other twice, with the top four from each group moving to a championship play-off stage, and the bottom four, relegation play-offs. The end result was a format which made the best of a bad situation. However, it meant Jiangsu could win the title despite finishing eight points behind, and losing both their regular stage matches to Guangzhou Evergrande, and Tianjin TEDA avoided relegation by winning a play-off match against Shenzhen, having won none of their 14 league stage games.
As is often the case in China, much of the focus was on events off the pitch. This year was no different, thanks to the virus. Sports headlines in September spoke of psychological pressure and isolation felt by the players, having by that point spent two months living in a single hotel with all other players and staff from other clubs in their respective group with barely any person-to-person contact with the outside world. Matches were played behind closed doors for the first half of the season, with the rules being relaxed somewhat to allow just a few thousand fans into the cavernous stadiums in Dalian and Suzhou, the two cities hosting each group. With most supporters tuning in online, the canned crowd noises added by television producers were widely mocked, but the general consensus was that it was just good to have local football of some kind to take in. VAR - now in its second year of use in China - continued to be a hugely controversial topic among local football pundits with countless examples of incorrect decisions resulting from its use, and several glaring fouls and errors standing after not being reviewed in the first place.
On the pitch, quality and intensity of play varied considerably, albeit for very understandable reasons, some games appeared to be glorified training matches, whilst others delivered the moments of drama and excitement of a normal season, such as Sun Shilin’s stunning last-minute equaliser from outside the box for Shenhua in a typically tempestuous and foul-ridden Shanghai derby against SIPG in the championship play-offs. Guangzhou Evergrande’s Wei Shihao, the heir to Wu Lei’s crown as China’s top domestic player, had a strong season, scoring eight goals, and it was business as usual in the scorers chart. The top ten were all foreign offensive players, led by Beijing Guoan’s Cedric Bakambu, formerly of Villarreal, with 14 goals to his name.
In what was generally viewed as a successful year all things considered, the closing act of the season was its most poignant. Wuhan Zall, hailing from the central Chinese city where the coronavirus first broke out, and who ended up being stuck outside China for three months as a result, clinched their CSL survival after narrowly edging out Zhejiang Greentown of China’s second tier league over two legs, scraping a 3-2 aggregate win.
With the virus now under control, a relative state of normality has returned to everyday life in China. But unfortunately, football looks to remain under COVID’s shadow. Reports in the local football press suggest the CSL will use the same format in 2021 and fans will not be allowed to return in normal numbers until such times as vaccinations are widespread.
The format meant Jiangsu could win the title despite finishing eight points behind, and losing both their regular stage matches to Guangzhou Evergrande