October 28, 1988, will be the most important day for the professionalization of Chinese football, a milestone day.

On this night, 64 drafted players from all over the world officially joined the A-League, which is less than a year old.

At the same time, the other half of the frustrated soul is naturally indispensable.

There were hundreds of rookies participating in the "draft" tonight, but in the end only half of them got what they wanted.

But that doesn't mean that undrafted players can't join League A. As long as they pass the club trial before the trade deadline, they can still get a guaranteed contract for one to two years.

In fact, there is one draft rule in League A: players over 24 years old do not need to participate in the draft.

But there are still so many older rookies today, mainly because the players who did not participate in the draft and the players who were undrafted cannot compare with the players who were selected in terms of their own treatment and the attention of the club.

In addition, if you do not participate in the draft, the contract you can sign is only for two years at most, and you cannot add any player options.

This is also a rule deliberately set up to encourage players to participate in the draft in the future. After all, the "draft" itself is a very gimmick, and it is good for increasing the influence and attention of the League A.

As for whether there will be undrafted players who will counterattack and eventually become famous superstars in League A, and even become more famous around the world?

First of all, this is definitely a scene that the Football Association itself hopes to see. Wu Jie also believes that there will definitely be such people in the future, but they must be extremely rare.

The rookies selected in each round at this time will basically sign with the club within a week.

Although this year is only the first draft of League A, the rules are already pretty good. After all, the Ministry of Sports and the Football Association have been preparing for this for several years. During this period, there were small groups who reminded me of it.

Therefore, the degree of perfection of various rules and competition systems of League A is even more scientific and advanced than sports leagues in Europe and the United States in some places.

This is just because of some objective factors. Many advanced systems and rules are still unable to be implemented, but they are not unprepared. As long as the time comes in the future, the progress of League A in this area will be as rapid as can be seen with the naked eye.

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The first season of League A, the exact start time is the end of November.

This is later than the European leagues, mainly due to factors such as the Olympic Games.

Next season, the start time of League A will be advanced to September, so it will not be much different from the major European leagues.

As for the schedule, in terms of the league, each team has to play home and away matches, so each club has to play 30 games in the league part. The points adopt the world-leading "three-point system", that is, only 3 draws can be achieved.

Top 1 win.

In terms of cup competitions, there is currently only one "Fuxing Cup" funded by the "China Sports Foundation".

This year is also the first one after the establishment of the "Fuxing Cup". The total prize money is as high as two million US dollars, but it only covers two leagues, A and B, with a total of 32 teams.

The specific competition format of the "Fuxing Cup" is not complicated and adopts the most common home and away system. However, in order to avoid the strong teams meeting in advance in the first round, the A teams are required not to meet in the first round. Therefore, the first round is all A

The first-division teams played against the second-division teams, and the draw began to be disrupted only after reaching the top 16.

As a result, A-A clubs will have to play at least 32 games this year, including league and cup competitions.

If we add the Asian Cup that was re-established in 1986 and renamed the "Asian Club Champions Cup", then in theory a team that can win the Triple Crown will have to play a full 51 games in a season! (The AFC Champions League at this level,

At this time, there are 16 teams participating, 6 games will be played in the group stage, and 5 games will be played in the knockout round to win the championship)

It is not easy to play so many games if you want to, so in the following week, in addition to rushing to report on the just-concluded draft of the League A, media from various countries also began to have more and more voices questioning it.

These questioning voices mainly focus on whether China has enough infrastructure to support a country with the third largest area in the world to host professional leagues that span more than half a year and often span more than a thousand kilometers?

This is indeed a reasonable doubt. In fact, the reason why the Sports Ministry and the Football Association have been preparing for four or five years is mainly because they are waiting for the domestic infrastructure to meet the standards.

Even if we don’t bring up the AFC Champions League, it is basically impossible to achieve inter-provincial competitions across China’s east, west, north, and south, relying only on railway transportation. It must be done through air flights.

Otherwise, just the domestic league + cup competitions would add up to 30 or 40 games each season, which would have been an almost impossible task five years ago.

But this year, China has finally been able to initially meet this transportation prerequisite.

Of course, the XJ team still cannot have such transportation conditions in this province, so in the next few seasons, the XJ team can only rent stadiums outside the province to play games.

In addition to traffic conditions, whether there are enough modern stadiums is also an issue that even many Chinese fans are unclear about.

Now that Chinese football has officially become professional, the new "League A" is no longer the stand-alone "Chinese Football League A". The vegetable fields and sand-like small stadiums in the past naturally cannot meet the needs of professional leagues.

needs?

Not to mention anything else, they must also provide enough modern stadiums just for the many overseas players who come here.

This is not a matter of face, but a matter of professionalism.

With so many people coming here, even the football leagues in Europe and America are paying attention. If they can't provide enough qualified stadiums, even Wu Jie will feel very unprofessional.

But this problem has actually been easily solved by the Football Association.

At this time, two of the seven "Friendship" stadiums honored by various countries in the Middle East and East Asia have been completed now, and the remaining ones will be completed in the next two years. This allows at least seven clubs to have world-class home stadiums (in the same city).

Clubs can share a stadium).

The Ministry of Sports and the Football Association have not only coerced and lured Asian countries over the years. They have stolen so much foreign exchange from the world through selling players and collecting protection fees. The amount converted into RMB is not a small amount. Of course, some of it has been invested.

It’s time to build the stadium.

Therefore, by the end of this year, half of the provincial capitals will have new stadiums that are more than half constructed or have just been built.

These self-financed stadiums are naturally inferior to the seven "Friendship Stadiums" in terms of scale and modernity, but they are still enough to accommodate 30,000 to 40,000 people to watch the event.

If most of the seats are removed and converted into standing positions, it will be no problem to accommodate 50,000 people, which is enough to meet the requirements of professional competitions.

At this time, including some old stadiums and stadiums, many of them have been transformed to meet the requirements of modern competitions. Therefore, China's stadium infrastructure is not bad, and there will be a dramatic improvement in two or three years.

After all, these infrastructures are not only for the establishment of League A, but also for preparations for the "world's first Women's Football World Cup" to be held in China next year.

Of course, more preparations are still for hosting the local World Cup.

Although they were too late to bid for the 1990 World Cup, they had seized FIFA's little pigtails at the last World Cup and also used severe coercion and inducement. Therefore, it was basically determined that the 1994 World Cup would be held in China.

hold.

Li Fenglou, who is the vice-president of FIFA, as well as four FIFA Council members from China, can confirm that there will be no further setbacks in this matter.

So after transportation and stadiums have initially met the requirements, China's hardware requirements for hosting professional leagues have met the standards.

As for the software requirements, there is no need to worry about this.

For example, the requirements for broadcast technology, related professionals, equipment and hardware, which are difficult for most developing countries to solve, are no longer a problem for China at this time.

First of all, in terms of broadcast technology, as the country that provided the "online packaging system" for the current Seoul Olympics and won the most bids for the broadcast technology of the "1990 World Cup in Italy", China benefited from Lenovo's deep technical reserves in this regard

, it can be foreseen that in the upcoming first season of League A, the whole world will see the advent of many novel broadcast technologies that are not even available in Europe.

China has indeed made many European countries envious in this regard. A wonderful modern football match broadcast has too many problems for developing countries that cannot be solved. These include - the number of camera seats in the entire field, the number of large-magnification cameras used,

The digital online packaging system, as well as the overall quality of the broadcast team and other software and hardware technologies are jointly determined.

First of all, there must be enough relevant practitioners and professional talents. After all, the broadcast team required for a game often requires thirty or fifty people to initially meet the requirements.

But China has already made plans in this regard. In fact, starting from the 1982 World Cup, the Ministry of Sports and the Football Association have sent a large number of technical and managerial personnel to Europe and the United States for study and exchange every year.

Moreover, as the first experimental field/big villain to abandon the bad habit of "taking over", the Body Ministry has eliminated a large number of incompetent personnel who inherited their father's business over the years. At the same time, it has reserved a large number of talents in various related fields, and even the subordinates of the Body Ministry

Most of the leaders of various sports associations have sufficient professional qualities.

There are also enough outstanding referees here. The Football Association has even established a special "football referee school" for this purpose, as well as an inspection department set up to deal with referees accepting bribes. The main focus is professionalism + integrity.

These are all the efforts of professional talents. League A has even surpassed the European League in pursuing "fairness" and "technical" innovation - they have made full use of Lenovo's advanced technology and made on this basis

It has made some epoch-making innovations and changes, as well as many technological applications that are unprecedented in history.

For example, League A has implemented the world's only "Eagle Eye Technology". This technology solves the problem of it being difficult to tell whether a football has crossed the goal line with the human eye. Therefore, there will no longer be "goal-line fans" in League A.

Eucalyptus".

Of course, as the "Chinese Football Association", which is aiming to be the most advanced and cleanest in the world, it also knows very well that it cannot let high technology take over and ruin football.

The charm of a football match is not just as simple as winning or losing. Sometimes, misjudgments on the football field are even part of the charm of football.

But this kind of charm needs to be mastered to a certain degree. It is best to leave a little room for "errors" in the football game on the basis of being generally fair and just, so that the game has some accidental factors, so that the football game can have

Just the right amount of surprise and surprise.

Therefore, there are also restrictions on the use of "Eagle Eye" technology. The Chinese Football Association has clarified two requirements for its use: 1. No interruption of the game, 2. Priority in supporting referee decisions.

To put it bluntly, the referee does not need to stop the game or review the video to determine whether a goal has been scored. Even if the decision is wrong, the referee's decision will be given priority.

But the corresponding new rule is that both teams in the game have the "right to challenge."

The rules currently implemented are: In each game, the coaches of both sides can use the "right to challenge" once in each half when a player is shown a red card, and when "whether the football as a whole crosses the goal line" or a penalty kick is awarded for a foul in the penalty area.

.(Not used in the first half, cannot be left in the second half)

This challenge means: you can force the referee team to watch a video replay. If you make a mistake, you can change the decision. But if you don't make a mistake, the head coach will have to get a yellow card. If you accumulate two yellow cards, you will be sent off and suspended for one game.

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This "challenge" is obviously regarded as one of the "charms" of the game, rather than pursuing absolute fairness and justice, but in this regard (fairness and justice) it is still much better than the European League.

In addition to the epoch-making progress in new rules and new technologies, the A-League also has more advanced and unique features in broadcasting software and hardware.

Take CCTV Sports Channel as an example. Every game broadcast will have more than a dozen cameras basically covering the entire field. Some special baseline cameras have also been set up. There is even a miniature camera installed on the net behind the goal.

These cameras at different positions allow the audience in front of the TV to have a better audio-visual picture of the broadcast and better present local and close-ups.

In addition, League A also uses the world's leading "Lenovo's third-generation online packaging system". The latest version of this system can not only provide more live broadcasts and on-field data, such as accurately calculating distances and accurately drawing 9.15-meter lines,

And whether the human wall retreats to a distance of 9.15 meters, etc., so that the audience can more clearly understand and interpret more details on the field.
To be continued...