Talking Balls: Zeroes, Heroes and Heroin
The numbers:
65,400 – Fines (in RMB) accumulated by Beijing Guoan so far this season. This includes 31 yellow cards, 2 red cards and RMB 60, 000 for fouls by Joel Griffiths and Zhou Ting.
30,000 – Average crowd attendance at the Workers’ Stadium for Guoan games
25,000 – Rent per month paid by Joel Griffiths for an apartment near The Place; it’s for his family to visit during the mid-season break.
The Beijing Youth Daily reports that Joel Griffiths spends an hour a day learning Chinese and he can now fluently say “I want my coffee with milk and sugar.” Supposedly, he is already fluent at saying that phrase in both French and German, while his brother, Ryan, can speak Romanian. As if that’s not enough intelligent footballers, Darko Matic can speak more than five languages. If the boys can use those smarts on the pitch, they might not lead the league in fines by the end of the season.
Wang Dong, of Changchun Yatai, recently went on trial at Newcastle United Jets in Australia. No word yet as to whether the Griffiths brothers’ former club will take up the option to sign the midfielder.
Sun Jihai has officially rejoined Chengdu Blades, and joins them in the middle of a relegation dogfight. This is much the same as his brief return to Dalian Shide in 1999 when he successfully kept them up before he became the most expensive Asian footballer ever when he moved to Manchester City for GBP 2,000,000 in 2002. Since leaving the richest team in Manchester in 2008, he has only played 17 games for Sheffield United.
Chengdu Blades unexpectedly beat defending champions Shandong Luneng 2-1 in the CSL, both goals coming from their Brazilian Rodrigues. The player was then believed to be “suspected to be involved with prostitution and heroin” in Shenzhen on July 7. The player was recognized by Shenzhen police as he previously played for Shenzhen. The Blades, brilliantly and naively, argued that it could not be Rodrigues as his wife is in Chengdu so there’s “no reason for him to take a flight anywhere all by himself only on the second day of the half season holiday.” A journalist in Chengdu also backed the club’s fuzzy logic saying he saw Rodrigues in a Chengdu pub on July 6 so he couldn’t be arrested in Shenzhen the next day.
The CFA are said to be bringing back the CFA Cup in late 2010. The biggest change to the competition is that it will be open to CFA recognized amateur and community teams, which may swell numbers to over 300.
Finally, Yao Ming may be out injured but that can’t stop the big man making the headlines. The word is that he is in talks to buy his old team, the Shanghai Sharks. The team faces an uncertain future in the CBA after some financial difficulties, so the help of its most famous son could not come at a better time.