Coronavirus: Marouane Fellaini, Yaya Toure among players who could leave CSL over season halt
Suspension brings about possibility of Marouane Fellaini, Moussa Dembele and Yaya Toure looking for new clubs elsewhere
Thursday 30 January 2020 13:37, UK
Chinese Super League stars could be tempted into looking for new clubs after the Chinese Football Association (CFA) announced the postponement of all domestic games due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
The suspension of the Chinese Super League, which was due to begin its 2020 season on February 22nd, has brought about the possibility of players such as Marouane Fellaini, Moussa Dembele and Yaya Toure looking for somewhere else to play football this year.
The Chinese FA has confirmed that, due to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus outbreak, it cannot schedule a new start date for the 2020 season, although it is still advertising October 31 as the date for its final round of matches.
As a result, a number of high-profile players, many who have already played in the Premier League, will not be able to play in the immediate future should they remain with their CSL club.
Many sides are currently in pre-season, although details of any warm-up matches appear not to have been released by any club or the CSL.
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Former Premier League players Dembele, Fellaini, Graziano Pelle, Marko Arnautovic, Salomon Rondon and Yaya Toure are all contracted to CSL clubs for the forthcoming 2020 season.
However, given the season will not begin in just over three weeks' time and uncertainty whether it will be played at all, some players will want game-time while clubs may look for ways to ease financial pressures.
CSL clubs in 2020 are all bound by strict spending rules, including a salary cap on foreign players that cannot top 3m euros per player (£2.54 million) and work within a budget where clubs cannot spend more than 143m euros (£121 million) in total on all outgoings, no more than 60 per cent of which can be spent on salaries.
With just a short time remaining until the January transfer window closes, a scenario exists where players may instruct their representatives to look for temporary employment elsewhere while CSL clubs would look favourably at offloading high earning players who cannot play.
Sky Sports News has contacted a number of CSL clubs to ask whether any of their foreign players are currently in China or when they are now expecting them to report back for pre-season.
The influence of Coronavirus on Chinese sport
The total number of confirmed deaths from the newly identified pathogen in the country has risen to 170.
Chinese health authorities said there were 7,711 confirmed cases of infection as of the end of Wednesday, mostly in Hubei province, while infections have been reported in at least 15 other countries.
- World Athletics postpone Indoor Championships over coronavirus outbreak
- Coronavirus threatens World Indoor Athletics Championships in Nanjing
- China Women quarantined in hotel
The virus has had a major impact on China's sporting landscape, with several events cancelled and the country's Olympic women's soccer team quarantined in Australia.
On Thursday, the CFA said in a statement on its website that football games at all levels would be postponed in order to help control the virus spread.
"The Chinese Football Association will continue to maintain close communication with national authorities ...and make reasonable adjustments to the organisation, schedule and scale of matches where necessary," it said.
The Chinese women's soccer team had travelled to Australia to play in an Olympic qualifying tournament but will remain quarantined in a Brisbane hotel.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the players were healthy and being checked every day.
Several members of the local Chinese communities have cancelled Lunar New Year celebrations following the outbreak.
"I thank the Chinese community for their proactive response for how they've dealt with this," Young said.
The Olympic tournament had originally been scheduled to be held in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated, before it was switched to Nanjing and later transferred out of China to Sydney.
The Chinese team, who were scheduled to play their first match on February 3, arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday and have been told to remain in their hotel rooms until February 5.
Late on Wednesday, the World Athletics Indoor Championships, scheduled to take place in Nanjing in March, was postponed until 2021 over fears related to the coronavirus outbreak, the sport's governing body said.
The governing bodies of several other sports, including skiing, badminton, tennis and basketball, have also been forced into rearranging events, weighing possible changes or monitoring the implications of the outbreak.
