Excitement runs high as China's football season starts this week. Chinese football community expects a resurgence of beautiful game with former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and rookie coach Fabio Cannavaro marching the team with the world's biggest spenders.
During the transfer window, Chinese Super League clubs spent $165 million, almost twice the amount spent last year, and second only to the English Premier League, which spent more than $200 million.
Former Everton player Tim Cahill leads the team of 47 foreign import professional players, many of whom are from Brazil.
The transfer was mainly focused on Guangzhou Evergrande led by Cannavaro and Shanghai SIPG led by Eriksson. Both were appointed to be coaches just last year following the end of season 2014.
Evergrande will be playing for its fifth CSL title this year. The team will miss Marcello Lippi who went home to Italy for family reasons.
Last January, China's transfer record was broken by Cannavaro signing up the Brazilian player Ricardo Goulart with a whopping $17 million.
Goulart did what was expected of him, scoring all goals for Guangzhou in the opening of two AFC Champions League matches, scoring a 1-0 victory over FC Seoul and 3-2 over Western Sydney Wanderers.
Meanwhile, Argentine player Dario Conca was reportedly offered $11 million a year by Eriksson to get back to CSL. The former Evergrande player spent a year at Fluminense, a Brazilian club, then returned to China.
Aside from Conca, Eriksson also signed Davi from Guangzhou Evergrande and South Korean Kim Ju-young from FC Seoul.
This is Eriksson's second season in China after helping Guangzhou R&F to place third in 2014.