Football Daily—It was settled! After two straight defeats in the final rounds of the season, Guangzhou, once eight-time champions, were confirmed to have missed out on next season's Chinese Super League.
The China national football team's World Cup achievement drew widespread praise, but Guangzhou's brutal relegation was equally lamentable.
These were the former eight-time champions!
They had won eight Chinese Super League titles, along with two highly prestigious AFC Champions League trophies.
And now they had fallen this far!
After Evergrande went bankrupt, Guangzhou could originally have muddled through their difficulties, but their results this season had simply been too dreadful.
Now that they had been relegated to China League One, there was truly nothing that could be done.
This relegation could be said to have shattered Guangzhou's final line of defense.
At the start of 2023, Guangzhou released an advertisement titled: Evergrande Football Club Recruitment Advertisement.
The core transfer proposal put forward by Guangzhou in the advertisement was as follows: a transfer of 100% of the club's equity, priced at zero yuan.
"Holy shit, this is insane."
The moment Tang Ye saw the news, he called Boer without a second thought.
"Do you know Guangzhou? Guangzhou Evergrande, the one that used to play in the AFC Champions League. I think we can buy them."
It was not that Tang Ye was acting impulsively. The prospect of buying Guangzhou Evergrande simply meant too much to him.
Tang Ye was from Guangdong, after all. Growing up, the team he had heard about most was neighboring Guangzhou Evergrande. Acquiring them now felt rather like fulfilling a childhood dream.
After hearing the news from Tang, Boer immediately began researching Guangzhou and brought Tang Ye some very bad news three days later.
"Tom, you didn't read the entire announcement... It's true that you can