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18 April 2018
Focus on… Jiabao Wen, symbol of a China in quest of talents
The Toulon Tournament is fast approaching. To wait patiently until the beginning of the 46th edition of the competition (from 26th May to 9th June), let’s take a look at the players who could shine during the Maurice Revello Tournament 2018. Today, we talk about Jiabao Wen, the Guangzhou Evergrande youngster.
Football is the global game, the world's most popular sport. Over the last years, football became popular as well in one of the biggest countries in the world : China. The local clubs’ owners splashed out recently a huge amount of money to lure a number of famous players to the Chinese Super League.
Carlos Tevez, Hulk, Oscar, Jackson Martinez, Axel Witsel or more recently Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco (who played the Toulon Tournament in 2013) : all have joined the Chinese Super League. All these signings helped to increase the number of fans interested in football in the Asian country.
And what about the young Chinese players ? In order to help their development among all the foreign stars, the Chinese Super League has introduced a rule : every Chinese Super League team has to include at least one local player aged 23 (or less) in the starting line-up of each game.
An opportunity to clinch
This new rule helped the breakthrough of a number youngsters including Jiabao Wen. Despite his young age, the 19-year-old left-back has started several games with the Chinese giants Guangzhou Evergrande, winners of the last seven league titles !
The Liaoning-born has benefited from this game time and has repaid the faith shown in him by the 2006 World Cup winner Fabio Cavannaro, who is the Guangzhou Evergrande head coach.
He is likely to pursue his development with China during the Toulon Tournament 2018 as the Asian national team will come in the south of France with a squad composed mainly of local players. One of them could be Jiabao Wen…
Mathieu Lauricella
