On January 6th, Beijing time, former Chinese Super League "8-time champion" Guangzhou FC announced its withdrawal from the stage of professional football in China, officially ending its 32-year history of team building.
Previously, the Chinese Football Association announced the entry list for the three levels of league for the 2025 season, with 49 clubs obtaining entry qualifications. Among them, Guangzhou FC (China League One), Hebei China Fortune (Chinese Super League), and Hunan Billows (China League Two) were not included. After failing to make the entry list, Guangzhou Club followed Hunan Billows and Hebei China Fortune in announcing its dissolution.
The predecessor of Guangzhou Club was the Guangzhou Football Team established in 1954. In January 1993, the Guangzhou City Football Team collaborated with the Sun God Group to become China's first government-enterprise joint-stock professional football club. In 2010, Evergrande Group acquired all the shares of Guangzhou Football Club for 100 million euros, marking the official entry of Guangzhou FC into the Evergrande era.
That season, Guangzhou Evergrande was promoted from the China League One to the Chinese Super League. Subsequently, under Evergrande's massive investment, Guangzhou FC won the Chinese Super League championship for seven consecutive seasons, during which world-renowned coaches Marcello Lippi and Luiz Felipe Scolari each led the team to win an AFC Champions League title.
In 2018, despite being interrupted by Shanghai SIPG in their bid for an unprecedented eight consecutive Chinese Super League titles, Guangzhou FC reclaimed the championship in 2019, equaling Dalian Shide's record as the team with the most championships in the history of China's top professional football league.
Unfortunately, due to financial problems with the parent company, since the 2021 season, Guangzhou FC has been in crisis, with key players leaving one after another, ultimately resulting in relegation to the China League One in 2022. In the 2023 China League One season, the team successfully avoided relegation. In the just-concluded 2024 season, Guangzhou FC achieved a third-place finish in the league with a dark horse performance. However, due to historical debt issues, Guangzhou FC failed to obtain entry qualifications for the 2025 professional league season and subsequently announced its dissolution.
Guangzhou FC once created too many records in the Chinese Super League, including winning the championship as a newly promoted team, being the first team in Chinese Super League history to successfully defend their title, being the first team in China's top professional football league to achieve four consecutive championships, five consecutive championships, six consecutive championships, and seven consecutive championships, having the fewest losses in a single Chinese Super League season (one loss each in 2013 and 2015), the longest unbeaten streak at home in the Chinese Super League (44 games), and the longest away winning streak in the Chinese Super League (10 consecutive wins).
However, unfortunately, all these glorious years have now become a thing of the past. The former Asian powerhouse and the number one team in the history of the Chinese Super League has now sadly disbanded, which is truly regrettable.
According to previous media reports, Guangzhou FC's historical liabilities amount to tens of billions. After the announcement of the club's dissolution, how to deal with this huge debt and what will happen to the high-quality asset Evergrande Football School will also be a focus of public attention.
Appendix: A look at the honors of the Evergrande era of Guangzhou FC
AFC Champions League champions ×2: 2015 2013
Chinese Super League champions ×8: 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2019
China League One champions ×1: 2010
FA Cup champions ×2: 2012 2016
Super Cup champions ×4: 2012 2016 2017 2018