China set to buy its way to the top of world football

09 February 2016 - 02:19 By Ned Kelly in Shanghai, ©The Daily Telegraph

Perhaps more than any other club in the country, Shanghai SIPG epitomise the revolution gripping Chinese football. The club were formed just a decade ago, and have been in the top flight for only three seasons, having been bolstered by a huge government-backed cash injection in the last year.They will make their AFC Champions League debut tonight in a qualifier against Thais Muangthong United.Sven-Goran Eriksson, the head coach, will be hoping that the Ghanaian striker Asamoah Gyan, who has scored in three World Cups, and the Argentinian midfielder Dario Conca, whose move to China in 2011 made him better paid than his compatriot Lionel Messi, will have what it takes to see them through.They should do - those three names alone are said to cost the club more than £27.6-million a year in salary.Rewind to 2000, and inspired by the success of Manchester United's youth development programme, an eccentric, self-proclaimed coaching genius named Xu Genbao set up a football academy in Chongming, a sparsely populatedisland in the mouth of the Yangtze River. At the front gate on a big rock he carved his ambition: "To Build a Manchester United of China."The club were first sponsored and then acquired by the Shanghai International Port Group, an arm of the government. With it came an assurance of serious investment.Eriksson was poached from CSL rivals Guangzhou R&F with a mandate to attract big name talent and secure an AFC Champions League spot.The club's top scorer in 2014, the Swedish international Tobias Hysen, son of the Liverpool centre back Glenn, earned 10 times what he was paid in Europe.Shanghai SIPG went on to push Guangzhou Evergrande to the last day of the season in the 2015 title race, the South China team winning out to earn their fifth consecutive Chinese Super League.They added a second AFC Champions League trophy in three years to their haul a month later.The influx of investment into Shanghai SIPG is occurring in clubs across the country.While Jiangsu Suning made headlines with the signing of Ramires and Alex Teixeira, who turned down Liverpool for a life in Nanjing, perhaps more telling is this fact: in the transfer window, the Chinese Super League spent more than any other in the world.Second was the English Premier League. Third? China League One...

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