China’s football crisis: what happened next after Covid struck?

There are finally positive signs for the game, but only after three years that diminished the CSL from its global standing

There cannot be many, if any, leagues that have been affected by the pandemic as much as the Chinese Super League. It was the first to deal with Covid-19 and, with China keeping stringent restrictions on daily life longer than elsewhere, the last to operate in tightly controlled conditions. With Beijing’s so-called zero-Covid policy recently abandoned, the country of 1.4bn people is finally opening up and this can only be good news for its beleaguered football industry.

2019 seems like a lifetime ago. Back then the league may have been losing a little of the lustre that made it one of the most-talked about in the world and some of the financial clout that had previously had coaches such as Antonio Conte, then of Chelsea, warning of the danger from the east, but the average attendance was still higher than anywhere else in Asia, at 24,000. There were still international stars such as Ezequiel Lavezzi, Graziano Pellè, Yannick Carrasco, Alex Teixeira, Javier Mascherano, Renato Augusto and Paulinho, and plenty of quality and excitement.