The Chinese record champion Guangzhou FC has been excluded from all national professional leagues. The step has been taken due to the owner’s debts.
The fall of the former model club continues: As Guangzhou FC announced, the Chinese Football Association has banned the club from participating in any of its professional leagues in the city of millions. The club last played in the second-tier League One, finishing third last season and thus narrowly missing out on promotion to the top flight.
The reason for the exclusion is the huge mountain of debt that the club had accumulated. Although they had “tried various means to remain in professional football”, according to a statement from the club, “the funds raised were not enough to pay off the debt”.
Robinho, Gilardino, Cannavaro
From 2010 to 2021, the club was called Guangzhou Evergrande, named after majority shareholder and real estate developer Evergrande Real Estate Group. It was under this name that the club celebrated its greatest successes. Between 2011 and 2019, Guangzhou won the Chinese league title eight times and the national cup twice. They also triumphed twice in the Asian Champions League in 2013 and 2015.
Thanks to its investment-happy owner, the club became the flagship of Chinese club football, signing players such as Robinho and Alberto Gilardino, among others. Guangzhou even paid 42 million euros to Atletico Madrid for the Colombian striker Jackson Martinez in 2016. The club also hired the World Cup coaches Marcello Lippi and Luiz Felipe Scolari. The Italian World Cup captain of 2006, Fabio Cannavaro, also coached the team in two terms.
300 billion euros in debt
In 2020, the club also began construction of a new stadium that was to cost more than one and a half billion euros and hold at least 80,000 spectators. Construction was halted in 2022 because owner Evergrande had gone bankrupt due to the collapse of the Chinese real estate market and had accumulated nearly 300 billion euros in debt. As a result, the team plummeted from second to penultimate place and was relegated to the second division. Now they will no longer be allowed to play there either.
