My New Local Team 上海申花

Suffering from football withdrawl, the boys and I decided to go and throw out backing behind our local side - Shanghai Shenhua. Shenhua play in the Chinese Super League, the league is comprised of 16 teams from all over the country and each team plays each other twice in the season. The league starts in March and finishes in November = so hopefully I will be able to get to most of the games. The game we went to see was against Shenzhen Jianlibao - both teams had started the season strongly so we were hoping for a close match.



Shanghai play at Hongkou stadium in the north of the city. The stadium has capacity for 33,000 supporters. The average attendance is probably only 10-12,000 though. The squad is mainly chinese players but there were also several australian, spanish and brazilians in the mix. We got tickts for £5 (the cheapest available from normal retailers but if you join a supporters club you can pay £15 for the whole season - so think I will look into that), they were on the second tier and about mid way around the pitch. You could get touted tickets really easily too (plus for a lot cheaper) but becuase we were working on the friday we didn't know if we'd have time to get these at the ground.

Before the game we went to the club shop and found you could buy about 5 million different types of shanghai shirt. Confused and astounded Dan plumped for this seasons Asian Champions League shirt for 50Yuan and I plumped for what was apparantly last years shirt for 150yuan (i preferred it as it had a chinese sponsor). The official shirt for this season was 550 yuan (more expensive than kits at home!). At the ground there were several sports outlets selling western shirts and kits as well.

After we were kitted out we snuck a few beers into the stadium and got ready to enjoy the game.
The more vocal fans - the chinese Ultras - or "Blue Boys" as they call themselves - congregate behind the goals at each end. They had quite a good collection of banners and flags and at each end of the ground they had two or three drums. One flag borrowed the liverpool motto - you'll never walk alone, we will be together forever - and others featured Bruce Lee and Che Gueverra. The atmosphere was quite good behind both goals with the fans singing a mix of local and european style football songs. They even did a verision of Popey the Sailor man! You can't get tickets for behind the goals unles you are a fan club member or season ticket holder and where we sat it was unfortunately quite quiet despite our best efforts. There were no away fans at all so the home fans were quite vociferous in their baiting of the away team. The whole idea of having "football ultras" when there are no away fans is quite bizzare.


The match was reasonably entertaining - not the greatest of games! The standard was not quite up to Blackpool's league but it was good fun. Shanghai ran out 4-1 winners. When Shenzhen scored the whole ground fell into complete silence but it was in reality a stroll in the park for Shanghai. Shenhua have never won the Chinese Super League but they are currently second so lets hope that this is their season.
The only thing I don't like about them is that they some loose affiliation with Manchester United!




After the match we had a few celebratory beers in one of the supports pubs near the stadium and then went on to a bar called mural where it was £10 all you can drink. One of the trainees had loads of friends over from Hong Kong so it was quite good fun. I wasn't meant to be driking too much as I had the wedding the next day but got a bit greedy with the ten pound offer and had a bit more than I had wanted to! As usual.