Trouble Looms In Chinese League After Signing Of Mikel, Oscar, Tevez

There is strong indication that the  Chinese government will look to cool the spending frenzy gripping the country’s Super League in the coming months after a host of top names moved to the country on huge salaries.

Chinese clubs have twice set new records for the highest-paid player in the world within the past month. Shanghai SIPG paid £60million to bring Oscar to the Super League,where he will earn around £500,000-a-week.

That pay packet briefly smashed the record only for Carlos Tevez to join Shanghai Shenhua in a £70m, £615,000-a-week deal that made him the world’s best paid player.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent has claimed the Real Madrid star had been offered £1.65m-a-week to join the Super League whilst the likes of Axel Witsel and Nigerian Mikel John Obi have been lured by salaries far beyond what they could earn in Europe.

Mikel, who has been at Chelsea since 2006, has been offered a three-year contract worth £140,000-a-week (about N82.6m) to become the latest player to swap Europe for the riches of Asia’s emerging football market.

The 29-year-old had been hesitant to move to China as he wanted to still play in a competitive league in Europe and was unsure about moving his family to the Far East.

However the bubble may be about to burst, with China’s Sports General Administration warning clubs that the government would enact regulation to curb “excessively high incomes”.

The government will “regulate and restrain high-priced signings, and make reasonable restrictions on players’ high incomes,” a spokesperson for the SGA added, whilst China will also look to use “rules and policy levers to encourage a long-term culture of local players”.

 

Standard Sports reports Thursday that Super League clubs are already limited to five foreign players per team, one of whom must come from the Asian Football Confederation.

Last month the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, People’s Daily,warned of a “bubble” brought on by £940m of spending on football in 2016.

The Asian transfer record has been broken on six occasions in the past year by Super League sides whilst in Europe a growing number of sides, from West Brom to Inter Milan, have Chinese owners.