Opinion | Soccer chat absent at China’s Communist Party Congress, but message to investors is still clear

This year, Chinese state authorities have repeatedly sought to curb such spending excesses by implementing several measures (such as a 100 per cent tax on overseas player signings), while issuing statements warning China’s investors in football to refrain from engaging in irrational overseas deals.

Against this backdrop, the 19th Communist Party Congress has been taking place in Beijing. Never before has this meeting attracted such interest from football fans across the world – from Newcastle United supporters anticipating a Chinese takeover of their club, to World Cup watchers looking for signs of a bid to host the tournament.

As President Xi Jinping took to the stage for what proved to be a long congress speech, it was not expected that he would make explicit or specific reference to football, and nor did he. However, there was still plenty in the body of his three-hour presentation to signal what football should expect in the coming years.

There are several tenets that Xi has always wanted as the legacy of his presidency, and congress both reiterated and reinforced these. Not least of them has been a drive to eradicate corruption from all walks of Chinese life. Football has thus far been no exception; indeed, this summer Inter Milan’s biggest shareholder (China’s Suning) was accused on Chinese state television of using the Italian club to launder money. In the past, Guo Guangchang (owner of Wolverhampton Wanderers) has similarly fallen foul of the authorities.

In restating his intention to continue tackling corruption, Xi sent a coded warning to those in football engaged in corrupt activity: that they will be chased-down and punished. There is a sense, too, that the label of ‘being accused of corruption’ may continue to be judiciously used by the state to reign-in errant football investors. As for those intermediaries taking their ‘cut’ from deals with China, they had better be careful.