It’s derby time

Derby fever sweeps the city Saturday night as the city’s two biggest football clubs go head-to-head in the China Super League at Shanghai Stadium.

Season 2003 Champions Shanghai Shenhua take a trip down metro line one (after a short trip on the light rail) to meet rivals Inter Shanghai who will be hoping to make amends for a 1-0 defeat in the last meeting between the sides in April.

Fans will be hoping for a few more goals tomorrow night — last season’s results were 3-2 in favour of Shenhua and a 1-1 draw, so fingers crossed for some serious goal mouth action when the match kicks off at 7:45 pm.

If you’ve got better things to do on Satuday night (not us of course, who will be providing you with a match report), but still fancy taking in some local footy, Shanghai Zobon will give you a reason to head over to Pudong on Sunday.

The Yuanshen Stadium side take on Shenyang Ginde in a Super League basement battle at 7:30 pm.

Meanwhile, the Du Wei Saga rolls on, with Shanghai Shenhua refusing to let Scottish champions Celtic take their star man on a six-month loan with a view to making it a permanent deal.

Wu Jinan, deputy general manager of Shenhua told Scottish newspaper The Herald, “The proposed transfer of Du to Celtic has not progressed as we would have liked.

“We do not wish to do business in this way. We support Du in his attempts to further his career in Europe but it would be far better if he waited for a more suitable set of circumstances.

“The door remains open for discussions with any European club who can come forward with a suitable proposal.”

Looks like the Du Wei saga is over — for now.

This post was originally published on Shanghaiist.