Oscar off to China in January

[Carl the Llama]

1 hour ago, Ross-Kemp said:

I will never, ever begrudge a human being for effectively moving job for more money. Footballers play for what, 20 years IF you're lucky. They need to make the most of it.

 

What id like to see is honesty.

 

"Yeah I'm moving China for 2 years, they're offering me half a million quid a week".

Yeah those poor bastards having to retire in their mid-30's with more money in the bank than a small country.

[Barky]

17 hours ago, MC Prussian said:

Great payday for him, although the domestic competition in China will be rather crap, and there's little to gain in Asian tournaments. It's an excessive amount of money for such a player, I wonder how these Chinese clubs amass all that wealth and how it can be they pour that much money into football?

 

Nothing to do with money laundering, hmm...

It's the 2nd biggest economy in the world which has grown at the fastest rate in the world over about 20 years. They've made huge amounts of money making and then selling to you all the stuff you have in your house, and are now spending it trying to get their domestic football league going. Yet you automatically assume just because it's china it must be money laundering?

 

Fair play to them I say. Right now they're only attracting big names in it for the money but china don't do small measures. Their league will be genuinely good in a decade's time.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

2 hours ago, Barky said:

Their league will be genuinely good in a decade's time.

 

I'm not so sure about that. Unless they change the cap regarding foreign talent clubs can bring in - or invest heavily in the youth infrastructure over there to produce better homegrown players, the sides competing will still only be smattered with talent, at best. The league won't be genuinely good if less than half the players fielded every game are actually decent whilst the Chinese players wouldn't look out of place in the very lower reaches of the football league.

[Raj]

Premier League have been paying big bucks for years to players,now it's China doing the same thing.

If some club are willing to pay £400 k a week for a player,that's upto them

It's wrong and horrible but feck all we can do about it until there's a maximum cap on salaries.

If a company offered you X amount extra for doing the same job 99% would sign on the dotted line.

Woukd be great to hear Oscar say though that he doesn't give a feck about some crap Chinese Club and that's hes just signing for the cash!!!!

[MC Prussian]

21 hours ago, Barky said:

It's the 2nd biggest economy in the world which has grown at the fastest rate in the world over about 20 years. They've made huge amounts of money making and then selling to you all the stuff you have in your house, and are now spending it trying to get their domestic football league going. Yet you automatically assume just because it's china it must be money laundering?

 

Fair play to them I say. Right now they're only attracting big names in it for the money but china don't do small measures. Their league will be genuinely good in a decade's time.

I didn't know you were sponsored by China to act as their advertisement director overseas.

 

Jokes aside, I don't see what the transfer fees and salaries paid for foreign footballers says about the quality of football in the Chinese top division - because as I understand, players like Oscar are merely brought in as foreign attractions to an otherwise poor league with little competition. The speed of growth does not appear sustainable.

 

Also, imagine the standard of living in the rest of the country, outside of pro football, when you've got x million people living below the existential minimum and/or in appalling conditions and major cities suffering from heavy doses of smog on a daily basis - and then there's the influence of the Communist Party. The amount of money flowing around in Chinese football is not healthy on a relative basis and it suggests to me there's something rather fishy going on, it smells of a gross prestige project. But that's just me. If you prefer to see it through a rose-tinted pair of specs, go ahead.

[Barky]

53 minutes ago, MC Prussian said:

I didn't know you were sponsored by China to act as their advertisement director overseas.

 

Jokes aside, I don't see what the transfer fees and salaries paid for foreign footballers says about the quality of football in the Chinese top division - because as I understand, players like Oscar are merely brought in as foreign attractions to an otherwise poor league with little competition. The speed of growth does not appear sustainable.

 

Also, imagine the standard of living in the rest of the country, outside of pro football, when you've got x million people living below the existential minimum and/or in appalling conditions and major cities suffering from heavy doses of smog on a daily basis - and then there's the influence of the Communist Party. The amount of money flowing around in Chinese football is not healthy on a relative basis and it suggests to me there's something rather fishy going on, it smells of a gross prestige project. But that's just me. If you prefer to see it through a rose-tinted pair of specs, go ahead.

My only issue was with the way you implied the money comes from illegal sources when it is in fact perfectly reasonable to think that the 2nd larger economy in the world is home to enough legitimately wealthy people to fund a few football clubs. 

 

Concerns about the disparity between the money in football and the rest of society are valid, but the same could be said about our country so I'm not sure we're in a position to preach.

 

Of course it'll be a "prestige project" to some extent like football club ownership is all over the world, but there's also a legitimate desire to improve the quality of their league, and I'm not sure why we should see that as a negative. As football fans shouldn't we be happy that the gift of quality football is being spread to other parts of the world?

[Barky]

18 hours ago, Miquel The Work Geordie said:

 

I'm not so sure about that. Unless they change the cap regarding foreign talent clubs can bring in - or invest heavily in the youth infrastructure over there to produce better homegrown players, the sides competing will still only be smattered with talent, at best. The league won't be genuinely good if less than half the players fielded every game are actually decent whilst the Chinese players wouldn't look out of place in the very lower reaches of the football league.

Fair point. Didn't realise they had a foreign player cap. That's probably a good thing for home grown talent, otherwise the teams would be full of foreign players. I think with the investment they're making we'll see numbers of good quality Chinese players coming through eventually, but it'll no doubt take a good couple of decades before they're producing the same volume of god players as other parts of the world. Until that happens it'll be quite unbalanced, like you've said.