The Shenzhen Football (Soccer) Team - fun to watch, but they often suck

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I love this photo that I took a few years ago, when it was still possible to go to soccer matches in Shenzhen. This was probably from 2019. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been soccer matches, but only in certain cities (for example, Shenzhen can play league games, but it has to play them in Guangzhou). Shenzhen has not hosted a match since 2019.

This is a wonderful photo - totally accidental - I just wanted to capture and post the score on my WeChat moments.  Inadvertently I caught this quite joyous mom and her son. They typify the spirit at Shenzhen soccer games. The team generally sucks, suffers from rotten coaching and bad player selection, but the players work their butts off and try to make the games interesting.

I once saw a Shenzhen team in 2019 come back from a 4 goal deficit within the last 5 minutes. It was amazing. 

Now, the big problem that I think should be taken care of is that the soccer stadium for this team is in a very remote area of Shenzhen called Longgang. It takes most people a very long time to get to Longgang and then the stadium in which they play is technically a track and field stadium - so the fans are separated from the pitch by a very large running track. Most folks who come to the games don't even sit on the lower level because the track separates you so far from the action. Most folks prefer the upper deck.

So here was the Italian coach of the Shenzhen team from 2019. I did not think this guy had much of a strategy for what did not seem to be such a bad team. In fact, the only time the team seemed to score was when they totally forgot this guy's strategy. His strategy - get the ball to the Norwegian guy. He then runs up field and lifts the ball to the Nigerian guy in the box who tries to head in a goal or tries to score any way he can. The strategy, basically, ignored most of the other guys on the team.

So Shenzhen has a soccer team in the Chinese league, and a few years ago, if I recall correctly, the Shenzhen team had one of the largest payrolls in China. 

The payroll meant nothing - the team was nearly relegated. Indeed, the team had been in relegation purgatory for a few years, until just recently.