With the 2024 Chinese football season nearing it’s end, the major question in everyone’s mind is not how the teams will prepare for the 2025 campaign, but which team will shut their doors permanently in the off-season.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a worrying trend has set precedent in the Chinese football pyramid, which sees clubs dying left and right during the off-season.
In the four-year period between 2020 and 2024 alone, a staggering 23 clubs have dissolved during the off-season in the top two tiers of Chinese football, with more meeting their demise in the lower leagues. The most notable of these clubs was 2020 Chinese Super League champions Jiangsu Suning, who were dissolved only a mere few months after winning their first-ever top-flight title.
But other notable clubs had gotten the chop as well in the past few years, such as 1990 Asian champions Liaoning FC, 2004 Chinese Super League champions Shenzhen FC, top-flight mainstays Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic, Guangzhou City, Dalian Pro, Guizhou FC, and Wuhan Yangtze River, as well as formerly ambitious upstarts in Hebei FC and Tianjin Tianhai.
Changes in the Chinese economy brought on by the pandemic as well as the financial challenges caused by the Chinese property sector crisis contributed to the collapse of these clubs, as well as measures taken by the Chinese Football Association (CFA) to curb unreasonable spending on big-name players from overseas and encourage a more sustainable financing of clubs and the development of young local talent.
These economical challenges also almost contributed to the demise of record 8-time Chinese Super League champions Guangzhou FC, since Evergrande Group, who had once financed the club, was in the heart of the Chinese property sector crisis. But thankfully, despite relegation in 2022, Guangzhou are still, as of today, alive and kicking, though the same could not be said for their 23 and more contemporaries.
The likes of Meizhou Hakka and Nantong Zhiyun, freshly relegated off the Chinese Super League in the 2024 season, are twitching their fingers nervously as in the past few years the clubs who were relegated out of the top-flight in China would always meet their demise…although with no news regarding their finances out of late, the two may breathe a sigh of relief.
But it’s not all doom and gloom in China.
Dalian Yingbo, newly-promoted to the 2025 Chinese Super League, continues on the legacy brought on by the dissolved Dalian clubs – Dalian Shide, Dalian Aerbin, Dalian Transcendence, and the aforementioned Dalian Pro.
The City Football Group-backed Shenzhen Peng City are continuing the footballing tradition in Shenzhen, while Liaoning Tieren and Chongqing Tonglianglong are building on the foundations set by Liaoning FC and Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic respectively.
Last but not least, Guangdong GZ Power, just promoted to the 2025 Chinese League One, are eyeing the possibility in filling in the void left by Guangzhou City in challenging Guangzhou FC for dominance over the city.
Only time will tell if more clubs will decide to call it a day in the 2024-25 off-season. But for now it’s a reality that more and more clubs are disappearing from China, but more new clubs are being established in their place – as is the norm in the Chinese football scene in the years following the financial bubble burst.