361 appearances across 15 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Shandong Taishan know what they have.
Player ratings1 Oct 2035
Xu Fan, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.08
A mark of 8.08 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Guilherme Madruga and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The dugout1 Oct 2035
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Interim Coach, on a 3‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Han Baiyang is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tian Shenglong will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Shandong Taishan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The accounts are being read more closely than the results. Wages before ambition is the order of business now, and the manager has been told so.
Squad10 Sep 2035
A muscle injury sidelines Albion Ademi for 16 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Shandong Taishan will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ginjiro Ikegaya was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Shandong Taishan will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Arel Shriki is on it.
10 seasons and 318 appearances, all of them here. Careers like this are not designed; they happen to a certain kind of man at a certain kind of club, and this town has one.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Changchun Yatai keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Albion Ademi and Shandong Taishan agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Shandong Taishan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Shandong Taishan asked and Shanghai Port said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“I watch every Shandong Taishan game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Shanghai Shenhua runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Jiang Shenglong was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Liu Binbin is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Zhang Chengrui has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Peng Yuhao has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Shandong Taishan will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.