Games without frontiers

The latest provincial league to launch is the 2025 Guangdong Football Super League which started on Saturday and runs for four months.

The competition has taken a different approach by calling itself the "Shengchao", or Provincial Super League and undertaking a qualification and knockout format. It was organized by the Guangdong Football Association with municipal sports bureaus and local soccer associations as co-organizers.

Unlike the city-based format in Jiangsu, the new Guangdong league features amateur clubs.

"Registration enthusiasm was extraordinary this year. By late June, we had 26 teams applying — 18 more than last year," said Liang Junjie, head of the association's commercial development department. Two teams from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region sought entry but couldn't join due to procedural complexities, he said.

After rigorous vetting, 22 teams from 13 of Guangdong's 21 prefecture-level cities were selected. From Aug 9 to 17, matches will be played in two venues in Meizhou and Zhaoqing, to select 11 teams who did not participate in the provincial league last year.

Those 11 teams, and five teams who participated in last year's competition, will play each other from Aug 23 to Sept 27 to decide the top four.

The semifinalists will play home-and-away games from Nov 2 to Nov 29, to determine the winner and have the chance to represent the province in the 2026 Chinese Football Association Member Association Champions League, the highest-level national amateur soccer competition. Nearly 70 matches will be played to determine the finalists.

"Previously, all matches used home-and-away formats, burdening teams with high venue rental, security, and travel costs," said Liang. "This year, only the semifinalists play home-and-away fixtures, drastically reducing expenses."

In 1999, Guangdong staged China's first regional competition organized by a provincial soccer association.

Xie Changjing, chairman of the Guangdong Football Association, said the new competition serves as the primary platform for amateur clubs to advance into professional leagues.

The league enforces strict amateur eligibility rules to ensure fair competition. Each team may register up to three players from Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan, with two permitted on the field at the same time.

Off the field, the league will collaborate with municipal culture and tourism departments to integrate sports, culture, tourism, agriculture and commerce.