Diego Forlan writes a weekly column for The National, appearing each Friday. The former Manchester United, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid striker has been the top scorer in Europe twice and won the Golden Boot at the 2010 World Cup. Forlan’s column will be written with the assistance of European football correspondent Andy Mitten.
I don’t think anyone expected Chinese clubs to be the main movers in the January transfer window.
China is not a country you associate with football. Despite having the world’s biggest population, they do not regularly qualify for World Cup Finals, though football is becoming a priority.
I was still surprised that the Colombian striker Jackson Martinez moved from Atletico Madrid to the Guangzhou Evergrande this week. Even more surprised at the huge €42 million (Dh170.8m) fee which broke the Asian transfer record.
Martinez, who is a player I like, is not yet 30 and at the peak of his career. He only moved from Porto to Atletico Madrid six months ago, a move which made sense after his form in Portugal and the Uefa Champions League. Now he’s moving to a league which is not even in the best 10 in the world.
He is going from playing for a team competing for the Primera Liga and the Champions League to a league with a much lower standard.
It seems crazy. He was the biggest Atletico signing of last summer and cost €35m. Now he has been sold for a big profit, though things were not going well for him in Spain where he only scored twice.
Atletico fans were hardly protesting. They can use the money and few clubs scout as well as my former club as I explained in my last column.
So why did he move and what is his motivation?
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Money is taking players to China — and there’s a lot of money being spent by Chinese teams. Five of the biggest seven deals in the transfer window were by Chinese clubs.
All were eye-opening. Ramires went from Chelsea, while Fredie Guarin and Gervinho moved from Inter Milan and Roma respectively. Former Everton midfielder Tim Cahill, Demba Ba, a striker who has played in the Premier League with Chelsea, Newcastle, and West Ham, and Asamoah Gyan, the former Al Ain forward, are already in China.
Luis Felipe Scolari, Brazil’s 2002 World Cup winning coach, will be Martinez’s manager, while Brazil internationals Robinho and Paulinho will be teammates.
Only the Premier League spent more on players this season.
Unlike Major League Soccer (MLS) in America, which is using a combination of grassroots coaching and the recruitment of high-profile players towards the end of their careers to raise standards, China are making headlines by buying big name players at their peak from big clubs.
With the greatest respect to the lesser leagues, going there used to be the place to go towards the end of your career. You would never get back playing for a top club.
Things are changing. Samuel Eto’o, my old nemesis when it came to the top goalscorer award in Spain, joined Anzhi Makhachkala in the Russian Premier League. He played there for two years and then went to Chelsea and Everton.
The Russian league is stronger than China, but I think more players will go to Asia and then return to play in major European leagues. It is not conventional, but it is possible.
It takes time to adjust to any league, but Martinez could come back to a European team and get up to speed. That is what you lose when you drop a level, the reflexes from playing alongside people who have much faster speed of thought.
I went to Japan, a more competitive league than China, when I was 34 and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have gone there at 29, but at that stage in my career the different lifestyle appealed and of course money was a factor. The club wanted a high profile player, ideally a forward. It was part marketing and I was fine with that. Clubs are in the entertainment business.
It is the same in China. Do Guangzhou Evergrande really need Martinez, the player? Not really. They could buy thousands of professional players who would be better than the players they already have, but in signing a major name from a major European club, it puts them on the map and makes people talk about them.
One player cannot make a huge difference to a team and if China really wants to raise the standard of football then it needs to start with developing players at youth level, but that takes time and it is not as exciting as an expensive new signing.
It shows that China wants to be serious about football. It is the world’s most populous country with the second biggest economy, yet the national team lags behind other Asian nations.
Football is the most popular game in the world. It gets attention for countries. Many people know of Uruguay because of what the football team has done in World Cups. The population of Uruguay is three million. China is 1.3 billion. We reach World Cups, China does not.
Chinese investors are spending money around the world and the same is true in football. They own 13 per cent of Manchester City and 20 per cent of Atletico. The connections are being made, but China is not a particularly attractive league for a player at the moment. No kid in South America dreams of playing in China like they do in Europe, so money is the way to compensate for that.
China is making football more attractive for Chinese people. They spend a lot of money bringing the biggest European teams on pre-season tours and, with three weeks left until the Chinese transfer window closes, there could be more surprises.
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