Guangzhou FC, China’s most successful football club and former Asian champions, has been expelled from the country’s professional leagues due to “significant historical debt,” according to the club.
The fall of the eight-time Chinese Super League (CSL) winners, who were once managed by Marcello Lippi and Fabio Cannavaro, marks the end of a significant era in Chinese domestic football.
In recent years, numerous Chinese clubs, including former CSL champions Jiangsu Suning, have collapsed due to financial struggles.
“The club tried various means to gain access to the professional league,” Guangzhou FC, formerly known as Guangzhou Evergrande, said.
“However, because of the heavy historical debt burden, the funds we raised were insufficient to clear them.”
The Chinese Football Association (CFA) has excluded Guangzhou FC from the list of 49 teams set to participate in China’s professional leagues for 2025.
Guangzhou FC once dominated Chinese football, securing seven consecutive Chinese Super League (CSL) titles from 2011 to 2017 and winning two Asian Champions League trophies.
However, the club faced relegation to the second tier in 2022 after its majority owner, Evergrande Real Estate Group, encountered severe financial difficulties amidst China’s property market downturn.
Guangzhou’s last title victory came in 2019.
The club had invested heavily in top players, repeatedly breaking China’s transfer records.
In 2016, they signed striker Jackson Martinez from Atletico Madrid for $46 million—a record fee for an Asian team at the time—during an era of lavish spending by Chinese clubs.
Guangzhou also attracted high-profile foreign managers, including Italy’s World Cup-winning coaches Marcello Lippi and Fabio Cannavaro, as well as Brazil’s Luiz Felipe Scolari.
In 2020, the club embarked on constructing a $1.86 billion stadium with a planned capacity of over 80,000 fans. However, the project was canceled in 2022 due to Evergrande’s mounting $300 billion debt.
Renamed Guangzhou FC in 2021 following CFA regulations banning corporate or sponsor names in team titles, the club recently finished third in the second-tier China League One for the 2024 season, narrowly missing promotion.
“We express our sincerest apologies to fans and everyone from all walks of life that have supported the club,” the club said in their statement on Monday.