A Football Report

By Andrew Crawford, writing from Shanghai

All good things have to come to an end eventually and the long shot that was Shanghai Shenhua belatedly saving their season and qualifying for the Asian Champions League is now off the table after the team was humiliated 4-2 by the high-flying Guizhou Renhe on Sunday.

Despite the hype and the astounding levels of investment, there will be no big weekday night fixtures against the best club teams in Asia in Shanghai for the second successive season. Instead, Shenhua will have to settle for mid table obscurity and the hope that their rapidly aging star players will still have enough magic left to make things right in 2013.

This isn’t to say that things haven’t been fun along the way. Stretching from early July until October, a team that had previously been flirting with relegation suddenly burst into life and began scoring boatloads of goals whilst going unbeaten over eleven games.

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By Andrew Crawford, writing from Shanghai

If only to make a sweltering Chinese summer that little bit more overwhelming, the ongoing saga at Shanghai Shenhua continues to roll on and the soap opera that is the city’s biggest football club found a new plotline to explore, namely a recent game with local rivals, Jiangsu Sainty.

In the build-up to the game on Sunday night, Shenhua slipped further towards the bottom of the Chinese Super League as a result of having played one game less than the other teams around them. Whether by coincidence or design, fans of the other team in the city, Shanghai East Asia, who are top of the second division in China, then reportedly laid siege to the Shenhua message boards, taunting their cousins about the latter’s form in the CSL. Indeed, when East Asia rose to the top of the Chinese second tier (China League One), it was thought that there might be a Shanghai derby for the first time in several years in 2013. Now it is possible that East Asia and Shenhua could simply swap places.

The East Asia angle is also interesting because of how Shenhua’s little brother has helped them out in their hour of need. The globally reported signing of Didier Drogba largely overlooked one important detail- the Ivorian’s new employers already have their maximum quota of foreign players. East Asia, who are owned by Xu Genbao, a former league-winning Shenhua manager and the effective godfather of Shanghainese football stepped in to send defender, Bai Jiajun, to the Hongkou on loan whilst receiving the Bosnian midfielder, Mario Bozic, in exchange. The move benefits Shenhua immensely- not only can they clear a roster spot for Drogba but they also get the services of a talented young full-back to assist an ailing defence. Xu’s blood, according to the Shanghainese media, is still blue but Shenhua fans will be far from delighted that they had to rely on a second division club to help them get out of a fix.

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By Andrew Crawford, writing from Shanghai

The dust has started to settle on the ugly coup that ousted Jean Tigana from the Shanghai Shenhua dug out last month- but that doesn’t mean things have improved.

Shenhua’s last game, another dull, uninspiring 0-0 draw against Shanghai Shenxin at the Hongkou was the fourth game in a row that the former have gone without scoring a goal. The team is currently two points from the relegation zone with a third of the season played. Their expected saviour, Nicolas Anelka has not scored since early April whilst the rest of his team mates look jaded and nervous, especially when playing infront of their home crowd. It is perhaps a backhanded compliment to the team that their best player so far has been the young goal keeper, Wang Dalei.

These days, Shenhua have a manager on the sidelines rather than on the pitch, and after Anelka’s brief managerial stint ended in disaster; the former Democratic Republic of Congo coach, Jean-Florent Ibenge, is nominally in charge. The word ‘nominal’ is important because it’s difficult to say exactly how much sway Ibenge has in the dressing room. Anelka, both by status and salary, is untouchable whilst the club’s chairman, Zhu Jun is frequently unpredictable and reactionary so it is safe to say that the new man won’t be doing too much to rock the boat.

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