China’s top soccer league — not so long ago heralded as the sport’s new frontier thanks to a half-decade of powerful support, ambitious owners and an era of untrammeled spending that lured top players with outsized salaries — is having an existential crisis. Companies that once spent tens of millions to acquire players now cannot pay their bills. China’s president, who once championed the sport, now faces far more serious priorities. And the country’s top division, the Super League, hasn’t played a game in months.五年来，得益于强大支持、雄心勃勃的老板，以及一个以高薪吸引顶级球员的撒钱时代，中国最高等级的足球联赛不久之前还被誉为这项运动的新前沿，如今却面临生存危机。
In the time it took to issue a news release, one of the country’s biggest clubs vaporized, leaving its players unpaid and bringing unwelcome attention to a project that had been one of the cornerstones of President Xi Jinping’s effort to transform China from a soccer backwater into one of its superpowers.一纸公告，中国最大的俱乐部之一就蒸发了，球员没有得到报酬，也给中超带来了不受欢迎的关注——它曾是习近平主席努力将中国从一个足球落后国家变为超级大国的基石之一。
“If a league is so malleable that it can just stop and start according to the national team schedule, you can see where priorities lie,” said Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that works in China for top European soccer teams. “It certainly doesn’t lie with the league anymore.”“如果一个联赛可以随意改变，以至于它可以根据国家队的赛程停赛开赛，你就可以看出他们看重的是什么，”在中国为欧洲顶级足球队工作的体育营销公司红灯笼(Red Lantern)的总监季哲（音）说 ... 阅读全文
In the time it took to issue a news release, one of the country’s biggest clubs vaporized, leaving its players unpaid and bringing unwelcome attention to a project that had been one of the cornerstones of President Xi Jinping’s effort to transform China from a soccer backwater into one of its superpowers.一纸公告，中国最大的俱乐部之一就蒸发了，球员没有得到报酬，也给中超带来了不受欢迎的关注——它曾是习近平主席努力将中国从一个足球落后国家变为超级大国的基石之一。
“If a league is so malleable that it can just stop and start according to the national team schedule, you can see where priorities lie,” said Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that works in China for top European soccer teams. “It certainly doesn’t lie with the league anymore.”“如果一个联赛可以随意改变，以至于它可以根据国家队的赛程停赛开赛，你就可以看出他们看重的是什么，”在中国为欧洲顶级足球队工作的体育营销公司红灯笼(Red Lantern)的总监季哲（音）说 ... 阅读全文