Why do the Chinese Super League and the MLS not improve their quality, even if they hire players with great experience and talent like Andrés Iniesta?

Leer en español: MLS y Superliga china: el desamor entre el espectáculo y el dinero

China is the country where most people practice soccer: more than 26 million according to Fifa. This is why the country seeks to raise its football level in its league and money has not been a problem. In 2016, the Brazilian footballer Oscar arrived at the Shanghai SIPG F. C, from Chelsea, for a value that ranged between 65 and 71 million euros. That season, that figure was the highest that would have been paid by a player in China, numbers that only compare with the big clubs in Europe.

Leja em português: MLS e Superliga Chinese: desgosto entre o show e dinheiro

However, other players came after him. Among the most prominent are the Colombians Jackson Martínez and Freddy Guarín; Argentines such as Ezequiel Lavezzi and Carlos Tevez; and the Brazilian Hulk and the already mentioned Oscar.

The purchase figures were not so high in relation to other types of transactions (between 10 and 50 million euros), but they exceeded expectations in terms of salaries. For example, Tevez signed for two seasons with Shanghái Shenhua, ensuring a balance of 80 million euros for his contract, or 40 million per season.

Maybe it was not Cristiano, but, with the salary that Carlos Tevez received, the best paid player in the world (in that year) stayed in the Chinese Super League.

For three seasons, the Chinese Super League has been one of the most privileged in terms of stratospheric hiring. Adding the seasons of 2016 to 2018, this Asian league spent a little more than one thousand one hundred million euros.

This last year, in players like Javier Mascherano, Yannick Ferreira Carrasco and Nico Gaitán, all from the Spanish league.

With these investments – which ended up becoming expenses -, the Superliga sought to overcome the soccer level of leagues as competitive as the Premier League of England or the League of Spain.

But the idyll between money and talent was not what was expected. Back to the case of Carlos Tevez and Shanghai Shenshua, the club had put all their expectations in the South American player, saying, through their social networks, that "(Tevez) will greatly improve the attack of the team."

However, the result was not dreamed. The year that the Argentinian lasted in the team, he could only score four goals; an insignificant number for a striker, and much more for a striker. And so, there are a couple of other stories.

Reflection of the MLS?

It seems that the story repeats itself or, in other words, remains. The Major League Soccer (MLS) of the United States, has been during the last two decades one of the most important leagues in financial issues and signings bomb in the world.

However, the need to complement the lack of interest of the American public with the talent of great players comes from previous years, when, for example -in the 70s- the old North American Soccer League (NASL) hired figures such as Pele, Johan Cruyff, Eusebio, Gerd Müller, among others.

With all this, it was not until 1994, with the organization of the World Cup, that the United States could attract the attention of a fanatic, both local and international, who saw the North American country as a place to play football.

During the following years, American football could grow with the creation of the current MLS and with the hiring of idols such as Carlos 'El Pibe' Valderrama (1996) and David Beckham (2007). Also, in recent years, the arrival of stars such as David Villa, Andrea Pirlo, Kaka and Bastian Schweinsteiger, also influenced the empowerment of the US league.

On the way to improve

Currently, both the United States and China are the countries with the highest number of people practicing football (24, 4 million and 26, 1 million people, respectively, according to the latest census conducted by FIFA ). However, the high sums of money invested in costly but talented players increase more and more, but the soccer talent of MLS and the Chinese Super League does not give to consider them as high level leagues.

In fact, according to the latest ranking by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS), the Chinese league occupies box 38 on the list of the most important in the world, while the American League it fits IGNORE INTO position 53.

However, we must not lose sight of the competitiveness of these leagues. Today, in the United States, the importation of important players is still maintained, such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but not with the same flow of previous years.

Latin American Post | Christopher Ramírez Hernández

Translated from "MLS y Superliga china: el desamor entre el espectáculo y el dinero"