Guangzhou Evergrande have announced a deal for Korean starlet Kim Young-Gwon, purchasing him from Japanese club Omiya Ardija. The southerners paid a massive transfer fee of US$2.5 million for the youngster and have signed him for four years. Kim’s salary details are undisclosed at the present time.
Kim was a solid part of the relegated FC Tokyo squad in 2010, he then moved to Omiya where he’s spent the past two seasons and been a regular in the starting lineup. He also has international experience, serving with the Korean U20 and U23 squads before slowly working his way into the national team setup in 2010.
For those who are sick of transfer rumors, this signing will put an end to a lot of them, Kaka’s not coming to Guangzhou nor can any other foreigners join Evergrande as they’ve now used the two foreign transfer spots they get during this window. The Cantonese club were linked with Korean captain Lee Jung-Soo, who had considerable ACL experience, but was also near the end of his career. Kim’s a kid with a considerable future ahead of him, an excellent piece of business by Evergrande.
Even the J-League can’t resist the amount of money Evergrande is throwing out. However, I am curious and perhaps someone can answer this question for me. I thought the CSL allowed for only one Asian player. So does that mean Cho Won-Hee is on his way out or are Evergrande just taking advantage of the new foreigner rule?
The rules are, literally, different for Evergrande.
He is probably out.
My response about the rules being different for Guangzhou was a bit sarcastic, but its true. First, the CSL rule is that of a team’s 5 foreign players, 1 must be Asian, but if a team wanted, all 5 could be Asian. The main issue is that Evergrande is allowed 7 foreigners, due to a midseason rule change, and since they are only allowed to bring in 2 foreign players during the midseason transfer window (and they’ve done so already), there’s no reason to dump Cho, so I think they will keep him around and then rethink their options at the end of the season.