After a two week break from league action due to international fixtures, the focus shifted back to the CSL as action resumed with round 3 during the last weekend in China’s top footballing division.
Friday night saw a full house in Beijing as Guoan hosted Guangzhou Evergrande. The spoils in this entertaining match were shared in the end. Guizhou Renhe finally secured the first victory of the campaign by beating Wuhan Zall 2-1 in Guiyang. This result leaves newly promoted Wuhan’s points tally at zero. Shanghai Shenxin, on the other hand, earned their first point of the season. The outfit who plays their home games at Pudong’s Yuanshen Stadium was even close to take all three away from Nanjing, but Sainty managed to equalize late. The game ended 2-2.
On Saturday afternoon Shanghai East Asia fought back to earn a 3-3 draw away at Dalian Aerbin. East Asia won a valuable point on the road, while Aerbin’s engine still stutters as a two goal lead was wasted. The championship contender from China’s Northeast can only show a single point for their efforts after three matches. Doomed Tianjin squandered a two goal cushion at home with Hangzhou forcing a late equalizer.
Round 3 saw a legacy of draws, five of all eight games finished with a point a piece. Albeit as inconspicuous as these draws seem to be, in three of those five matches, teams came back from trailing by two goals. This tells something about resilience and a fighting spirit in the CSL. A few of the goals also revealed a problem with the goal keepers in the league. The men between the posts didn’t look to fortunate on a few occasions.
What do you make of the action in the last round? Please share your observations here. Given the backdrop of having started the season with their back to the wall, I was quite surprised about the attendance figure in Tianjin. After the three games the northeastern team still lingers at the bottom of the table with -3 points, despite having drawn in their respective first three matches.
Beijing Guoan 1 – 1 Guangzhou Evergrande
Attendance: 46,310
Attendance: 11,325
Attendance: 22,357
Dalian Aerbin 3 – 3 Shanghai East Asia
Attendance: 16,211
Tianjin Teda 2 – 2 Hangzhou Greentown
Attendance: 15, 518
Changchun Yatai 0 – 1 Qingdao Jonoon
Attendance: 10,365
Guangzhou R&F 0 – 2 Shandong Luneng
Attendance: 9,124
Shanghai Shenhua 2 – 2 Liaoning Whowin
Attendance: 9,637
Apologies for the video situation, I don’t know why these don’t link to the match videos. We had this problem for some time now and working to resolve it as we would like to present all the goals and the action to you. Please bear with us.