Chinese Super League – a new start or a false dawn?

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Ethan Meade assesses the state of the Chinese Super League…

It was supposed to be the transfer that heralded the start of a new era for football in the Far East. Didier Drogba arrived in Shanghai in July last year on a two and a half year deal, earning a reported £270,000 a week, greeted by a packed airport of fans all clamouring for a glimpse of a genuine worldwide football superstar. He joined a team who already boasted the services of Champions League winner and long-time France international Nicolas Anelka on their books. And yet, within 6 months, both Drogba and Anelka had left Shanghai Shenhua. So after all the fanfare, where did things go wrong for the pair? And where does it leave the ailing Chinese Super League?

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Match-Fixing and the Balance of Power in Russian Football

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As part of a series of articles on Russian football during the Winter break, False Nine Russian correspondent and debutant contributor, Andy Shenk, pores over the latest scandal in a saga of incidents that have brought match-fixing to the forefront of the squabbling authorities’s attention…

Russian football rumbles often with news of match-fixing, from the lowest to the highest levels. In 2009, Kryliya Sovetov lost 3-2 to Terek in Grozny in a Premier League encounter that reeked of corruption. Though neither team suffered any consequences, Leonid Slutsky, Kryliya manager at the time, commented several years later on the suspiciousness of the match: “I understood that the substance of that history was known at all levels – from Mutko [head of the Russian Football Union then] to the journalists. It’s just that no one’s yet to write the truth of the match in Grozny.” Continue reading