Wolves and the waning Chinese interest in English football
Wolves have bucked the trend of Chinese owners selling up. Are they here to stay?
It was a sign of the times when Wolves were bought by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun International in July 2016.
Suddenly, China was pouring money into football, buying clubs in Europe and luring overseas stars to play in its domestic football league with exorbitant salaries.
That summer, investors from the country also bought Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion in England, as well as Italian giants Inter Milan.
A few months earlier, two Chinese companies had purchased a 13 per cent stake in Manchester City’s owners City Football Group, with President Xi even paying the club a visit.
The following year Chinese owners took over at Southampton and Reading, while Chinese Super League clubs were hoovering up international stars such as Brazilians Oscar and Hulk.
President Xi kicked off the investment in football in 2016 when he declared his intention to turn the country into a footballing superpower.
Signing top talent from abroad would raise the level of the domestic league, while ownership of foreign clubs would provide avenues for exporting the best Chinese players, the theory went.
But that plan has long since changed, with central policy switching to encouraging investment at home.
As early as summer 2017, Chinese authorities reasoned that the influx might in fact be harming the local talent pipeline and announced a punitive tax on overseas signings of more than £5m.
Villa’s owner, Tony Xia, sold up to the club’s current owners in 2018, and since then the trickle of Chinese investors exiting football has become a flood.
Gao Jisheng offloaded Southampton in 2022, when Chinese ownership of City Football Group was reduced to just one per cent.
This week, Lai Guochuan was replaced as owner of West Brom by American businessman Shilen Patel after months of unrest from supporters.
A similar situation is unfolding at Reading, where Dai Yongge has been accused of taking the club to the brink of administration and will surely be gone soon.
That all leaves Wolves, one of the early adopters, as the last outpost of Chinese ownership in English professional football.
They have also been by far the most successful – not including Manchester City, where Far East influence has been minimal.
Wolves are the only one of the five English teams to be majority owned by Chinese investors who are in the Premier League, and they look like staying there for another year.
Despite some grim pre-season predictions, the Black Country club went into this weekend ninth in the table, ahead of Newcastle United and Chelsea.
Their close working relationship with super-agent Jorge Mendes has raised questions, but on the other hand has helped the club to access a better calibre of player.
So is Fosun set to continue bucking the trend and hold onto Wolves? That is harder to say. Belt-tightening last summer led to speculation that the owners had had enough.
But in a letter to supporters in August, chairman Jeff Shi wrote that Fosun “remains committed to Wolves and has never had any plans to sell the club. The club is a long-term project and an important one for Fosun.”
Booming interest in acquiring European football teams means that Fosun ought to have takers should they decide to sell up.
For now, however, they remain a reminder of President Xi’s brief dalliance with trying to get China to take over the footballing world.
