Hulk, Oscar, Paulinho, Fellaini… In the past decade, the Chinese Super League have been repeatedly shocking the global transfer market with record breaking fees. In the past January however, the league was changed drastically by the arrivals of two relatively unknown players.

“My name is Hou YongYong, 21-year-old, I’m glad to come to Beijing.” “Hi everyone, my name is Li Ke, I am happy to be at Beijing” In a press conference on February 26th, the first two naturalized Chinese players introduced themselves to the Beijing fans with their broken Mandarin. Nico Yennaris(Li Ke) and John Hou Saeter(Hou YongYong) were signed by Beijing Sinobo Guoan FC earlier in the year, and completed their naturalization process just soon enough to participate in the 2019 season of Chinese Super League.

Nico Yennaris, a Londoner born and raised, has a Chinese mother and a Cypriot father. The player has been a life-long Arsenal supporter following his father, who held season tickets to Highbury. Nico later spent his entire youth career at the Arsenal Academy and have represented England at U17, U18, and U19 levels. However, the chance to start for Arsenal never came despite the player patiently awaited. In January 2014, 21-year-old Yennaris joined League One team Brentford FC in effort to find playing minutes and to revitalize his career.

Yennaris was once Harry Kane’s teammate in the U-8 level, who would’ve imagined both of them earning lucrative contracts 17 years later

Nico eventually broke through the ranks and became a regular starter for Brentford in the Championship. And more importantly, his success started to gain attention from Beijing Guoan, a football club thousands of miles away from Brentford. In 2018, the general manager from Guoan made contact and the player, expressing interests in bringing him to China, as a Chinese citizen. It is reported that Nico is currently earning roughly €2 million yearly in Beijing, which puts him well above other domestic Chinese players and double of what he earns in the Championship. With such a steep jump in salary, Nico made his decision to play in the Chinese top flight.

Yennaris adopted the name Li Ke and became the first ever naturalized player of the Chinese National Team

The other naturalized player was Hou, who was once rated as a prodigy in Norwegian football. At just 16 years and 258 days, Hou was the youngest player ever to debut for the Norwegian giant Rosenborg BK. Unfortunately, Hou’s career has not panned out as fans expected. He later transferred to Norwegian team Stabaek and gradually became forgotten by the major media of Norwegian sports.

Interestingly, Hou’s ID indicates his ethnicity is Han, wonder if the Han ethnicity will be applied to all naturalized players

After Hou’s naturalization, Guoan’s general manager Li Ming claimed that he had contacted Hou way back in 2015 when he was the coach of the Chinese Youth National Team. However, Hou’s family was not keen on him giving up his Norwegian citizenship back then.(China is one of the countries that do not recognize dual citizenship) This on one hand showed how much CSL has stepped up in world football, on the other how this handsome fella did not fulfill his potential to become the player he could’ve become.

So why is the club paying big money to get two foreign players naturalized? It’s common knowledge that the salary disparity between elite foreign players and top Chinese players is huge. Thanks to the 3+1 policy(a club can only register 3 non-Asian foreign players and 1 Asian foreign player in a season) commonly enforced in Asian football, top-level domestic players are also being sought after by big clubs in the league now. Riding on an inflated economy, these clubs are throwing money at any player that can potentially change the fortune for them.

However, the significance of the two transfers is far more than two players coming to a less competitive league in effort to revitalize their football career, it’s the butterfly effect that is truly noteworthy.

Since then, more and more Chinese clubs have set their eyes on Chinese descendants in foreign football leagues. Including Guangzhou Evergrande, the team that vowed to develop a fully-Chinese squad by 2020, signed English center back Tyias Browning from Everton. Browning is widely speculated as a Chinese descendant, but has yet to find evidence to prove it, hence making his naturalization process difficult. As of now, the player is still taking up one foreign player spot on the squad.

State-owned football club Shandong Luneng however, took the naturalization game to another level. The club signed a 22-year-old Portuguese midfielder Pedro Delgado in 2018. The player could not be registered in the CSL as the club already filled up all foreign player slots, thus he was could not participate in the league or even join the reserve team. Just as people were scratching their heads wondering what the club is planning to do with this extra foreign player, the club announced that the player’s naturalization process has been completed, with no further explanation on how it is even possible.

Since, Delgado has made his debut in a league game against Beijing Guoan.

Delgado has no Chinese ancestors in his bloodline, nor has he lived in China for more than 5 years to qualify him to play for the Chinese national team. Plus, Chinese citizenship is notoriously difficult to acquire: Considering less than a thousand foreigners total in the past century have acquire Chinese citizenship, it is truly bizarre that Delgado – a player who has never even broke through Sporting’s reserve team received the citizenship. Fans speculated that: the Chinese Football Association decided to gamble on Delgado’s career, and expected him to be capable of being a star in the national team after 5 years of living in China, therefore giving Shandong the green light to naturalize the process. It is important to note that Shandong Luneng is a state-owned club and China has a heavily centralized government, a green light from the FA essentially means the same thing as a green light from the Immigration Administration.

Following Delgado’s naturalization, Guangzhou then had intention to naturalize more foreign player, including two former CSL golden boots Elkeson and Aloisio, 26-year-old Fernandinho, and 28-year-old Ricardo Goulart. All 4 of them are Brazilian, and are not Chinese descendants in any way imaginable. Elkeson is reported to be paid €10million a year, which is a steep jump from his previous €6million salary. Out of the players mentioned above, Elkeson is currently the only player that has completed the naturalization process, and has already made his debut against Maldives on September 10.

China NT’s official poster in 2015 scorned Hong Kong for fielding a “colorful” line up. Oh the irony!

Naturalization in international football is nothing unheard of. Take Spanish-Argentine footballer Sergio Escudero for example, he changed his citizenship to Japan at the age of 19, and has been playing his entire career in Asia. Being a citizen of Asian country, Escudero has usually been seen as the hot stuff during transfer seasons. When it comes to naturalization, Japan is probably ahead of the curve comparing to any other asian countries. Players including Alessandro Santos and Tulio Tanaka were all naturalized players who have served Japan in World Cups. Most of these players however, have some ties to Japan, either they have family in the country, or have been living there for years.

Rather than Japan’s style of going about naturalization, China’s aggressive approach is much more like Qatar, a similarly authoritative nation on the other side of the continent. In fact, Sepp Blatter has publicly voiced his discontent with Qatar’s naturalization strategy, and made a comparison to the Qatari handball team:

“The nation of 2.2 million faces the huge challenge of forming a competitive national football team by 2022. However, this cannot be achieved by quickly naturalizing players… what happened at this year’s men’s world handball championship in Qatar stretched this notion to the point of absurdity.” Sepp Blatter on Qatar handball team’s reliance on European-born players

Qatar heavily relies on foreign-born players, and has been warned by FIFA for multiple times.

For decades, fans around the world have viewed football as a vehicle for something greater, perhaps a gathering of the like-minded, a mean to express beliefs, or at least a way to show pride in your identity. In China, the Communist party is fearful of collective voices as such and will not hesitate shutting them down before it’s too late. That’s why fan culture has never been properly installed, and football is merely a commercial product put out by the players on the pitch. So, can you really blame these clubs for rather throwing cash at foreign players instead of improving their youth academies? Without a proper football culture, these fans would abandon their teams as soon as they stop being competitive. Thus, the owners of these clubs come and go every several years, and none of them have any long-term vision of building a sustainable model for the clubs. The current phenomenon of using naturalization as a quick fix is no different. With this notion of spending money is easier than spending time, there is really no reason for these clubs not to take advantage of recruiting foreign players. Undeniably, paying foreign talents to serve a nationalistic agenda is completely counterintuitive to the whole point of the sport. Not only does it spend away this money it could be to promote the health and wellbeing of children, but also demonstrating that its own citizens are not capable of representing their own nation.

Hopefully this craze about naturalization, as some local media suggested, is just a one-time effort helping China to push for the 2022 WC. Regardless of the outcome, some serious self-reflection is needed from the Chinese FA. If China really is determined to improve their football as they claim to be, instead of using money as a tool to drive eyeballs to the top flight, they should focus on the long-term vision and development of a proper football culture.