Letters From Shanghai: Two presents. Anelka and Tigana.

By Andrew Crawford, writing from Shanghai. Andrew has written for The Independent and When Saturday Comes, while also writing for Wild East Football, the only English site covering Chinese football. He’ll be featuring “Letters from Shanghai” on AFR to help track the growth of the league, as well as the stars playing there.

This Christmas, fans of Shanghai Shenhua got two very exciting presents in the form of ex-Chelsea, Arsenal and Real Madrid striker, Nicholas Anelka and new manager Jean Tigana.

Sadly, Santa Claus was not involved in the arrival of our much-vaunted Gallic duo. Instead we have to ‘thank’ our much maligned, highly controversial chairman, Zhu Jan for sealing the deal but also a faceless benefactor for pulling the strings in the background and securing the funds.

Zhu is one of the Chinese Super League’s (CSL) da laoban’s (literally ‘big boss’), a group of business tycoons who have invested their money in a club and then proceed to run them with little awareness or interest in football itself.  Indeed, in the past few years, Zhu has picked himself in the starting line-up for preseason friendlies, made the club play its recent CFA Cup games four hours away in Anhui Province and sold on many of our best players without warning.

It goes without saying that sound logic has never been one of Zhu’s strong points and so when news of Anelka’s transfer broke, I asked another Shenhua fan about the funds for these signings and where they could have come from. My friend, a season ticketholder for several years, candidly replied that there was no way that the money could be Zhu’s. If it were, he added dryly, there would be no way Zhu could stop bragging about it. 

The big mystery is where all this money is coming from, something that my friend, like the rest of China, isn’t entirely sure of. What we have to go on are reports of an unnamed government-backed company pouring money into Shenhua, and that’s pretty much it. I guess we’ll never know the exact amount but for a man as egotistical as Zhu to be silenced overnight, you can get a rough idea about the scale of the funding but also the importance of the people behind it.

All of the above demonstrate how closely linked sport, politics and money are in China. Shenhua, an underperforming football club now finds itself being bankrolled by mystery backers with the aim of returning the team to its former glory but in doing so, only causes the club’s fans to ask more questions. Are there more players coming? Will there be even more money invested? Has the club been bought out?

What will happen next is anyone’s guess, although despite rumours mentioning Michael Ballack, Ronaldinho and Didier Drogba, Anelka may well be the most prominent name to arrive this season. That said, should the Frenchman complete his two year contract that starts in next Febuary, it could legitimize the league in the eyes of other aging big names who would otherwise drift to the MLS or the Gulf states.

There are obviously pros and cons with both of Shenhua’s signing. Anelka, despite his proven goal scoring record, is historically a prickly character and will almost certainly find himself exposed to unrealistic expectations from some supporters, especially those enticed back to the Hongkou by the Frenchman’s hype.

Equally, Tigana, though a successful coach in three different European leagues, has resigned from four out of the five teams he has managed and clearly has no qualms with walking out on a club if he is unhappy. Their relationships with Zhu this season are going to be compulsive viewing for anyone trying to predict where Shenhua will finish in the CSL table come November. 

As Shanghai’s viciously cold winter sets in, Shenhua fans now have even more reason to look forward to springtime, where they’ll be hoping that last season’s disastrous 11^th place finish will be erased by a more triumphant campaign this time around.

This is obviously a big ask considering that the club’s success will depend on two notoriously combustible Frenchmen, but as demonstrated by the madness of the last month, nothing is ever simple or logical in Chinese football.