Chongqing Lifan F.C.

Chongqing Lifan
重庆力帆

Full name	Chongqing Lifan Football Club 重庆力帆足球俱乐部
Founded	19 August 2000 as Chongqing Lifan
Ground	Yongchuan Sports Center (Capacity: 25,000)
Chairman	Yin Mingshan (尹明善)
Manager	Liu Jingbiao (刘劲彪)
League	China League One
2011	China League One, 8th
Home colours Away colours

Chongqing Lifan, are a professional Chinese football club who currently plays in the Chinese League One division. They play their home games at the 58,680 seater Chongqing Olympic Sports Center in Chongqing and are owned by the Chongqing based Lifan Group, which manufactures motorcycles, cars and spare parts. Originally called Qianwei (Vanguard) Wuhan and formed in 1995 to take part in the recently developed fully professional Chinese football league system. They would quickly rise up to the top tier and experience their greatest achievement of winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup and coming fourth within the league, however since then they have struggled to replicate the same success and have twice been relegated from the top tier in their history.

History

Formation

The clubs predecessor was called Qianwei and was created to take part in the recently developed fully professional Chinese football league system. They would take part at the bottom of the Chinese league pyramid in the third tier and by the 1995 league season come fourth within the league and gain promotion to the second tier.^[1] Within the second tier they would quickly gain significant funding from the local government and the Huandao Group, which in turn also saw the club change its name to Qianwei Huandao to represent this. With significant investment coming into the team they would buy several former Chinese internationals such as Feng Zhigang and Xu Tao to strengthen the squad. This would quickly pay off and the club would win the second tier title and promotion into the top tier for the first time at the end of the 1996 league season.^[2]

Chongqing

In the top tier the owners decided that the club needed to affiliate itself with a major reign and would decide to move nearby to Chongqing and into the Datianwan Stadium. This was followed by more Chinese internationals such as Jiang Feng and Han Jinming joining the team and ensuring the club stayed up at the end of the season. Ensuring that the club remain the only team within the reign the club would go on to merge and essentially take over lower league club Chongqing Hongyan the following season. This was then followed by a complete takeover of the entire club by the Lifan Group who bought the club for 55,800,000 yuan on August 19, 2000 and renamed the club Chongqing Lifan. While all of this was happening the clubs manager Lee Jang-Soo was ensuring that the club would gradually improve each successive season and provide the club with their greatest achievement of winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup for the first time in the clubs history. Chongqing Lifan would then be eligible to enter their first continental competition when they competitied in the 2001–02 Asian Cup Winners' Cup and with Stefano Impagliazzo as their new manager he would lead the club to a semi-finals position where the club lost to Anyang Cheetahs before ending the competition in fourth after losing to Al Sadd in a third place match.^[3]

Merger with Yunnan Hongta

See also Yunnan Hongta

In 2003 Chongqing Lifan was relegated and the club decided to buy Yunnan Hongta with the merger allowing the club to remain in the top division. The former Chongqing Lifan team became the new formed Hunan Xiangjun club that was relegated from the second division Jia League. Despite finishing bottom for both the first and the second season of the CSL, they still participated in the 2006 season as relegation had been cancelled for the first two seasons. However, in 2006, they finished last again and were finally relegated for 2007. Their best ever finish in the old First Division was fourth. As recently as 2002, Chongqing Lifan participated in Asian Cup Winner's Cup, but lost to Al Sadd. Anyang Cheetahs defeated Chongqing in the previous year. Wei Xin was Chongqing's best player.

Name changes

• 1995: Qianwei (Vanguard) Wuhan (前卫武汉)
• 1995: Qianwei (Vanguard) FC (前卫俱乐部)
• 1996-98: Qianwei (Vanguard) Huandao (前卫寰岛)
• 1999-00: Chongqing Longxin (重庆隆鑫)
• 2000-02: Chongqing Lifan (重庆力帆)
• 2003: Chongqing Lifan Xinganjue (重庆力帆新感觉)
• 2004: Chongqing Qiche (重庆奇伡)
• 2005-08: Chongqing Lifan (重庆力帆)
• 2009-: Chongqing Shixian Taibai (重庆诗仙太白)

• 

  -1995
  Qianwei FC
  (前卫俱乐部)

• 

  1996-2000
  Qianwei Huandao, Chongqing Longxin
  (前卫寰岛), (重庆隆鑫)

• 

  2000-current
  Chongqing Lifan
  (重庆力帆)

Results

• As of the end of 2011 season

All-time League rankings

Season	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Division	3	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2	2	1	1	2
Position	4	1	5	7	4	4	11	6	13 1	12 2	14 2	15	4	2	16	15	8

• ^1 merged with Yunnan Hongta so that the club could stay at top level.
• ^2 no relegation.

Current squad

As of 25 March 2011^[4]

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 1 GK Han Qian 2 DF Xia Jin 3 DF Yang Yun 4 DF Li Yi'nan 5 MF Zhao Kun 6 MF Zhou Heng 7 MF Luo Yi 8 MF Raí 9 FW Želimir Terkeš 10 FW Ivan Bošnjak 11 FW Zhang Jian 12 FW Zhang Chiming 13 DF Chen Qingjiang 14 MF Liu Zhenwei 15 MF Ding Bo 16 MF Wang Weicheng

No. Position Player 17 MF Gan Rui 18 DF Cui Ming 19 DF Liu Zhongyi 20 DF Xu Jiale 21 GK Li Huayang 22 MF Li Xiangbin 23 GK Zhang Lei 24 DF Xu Youzhi 25 MF Xu Xiaobo 26 FW Wang Fan 27 DF Luo Xin 28 DF He Suyang 29 MF Wu Peng 30 DF Dario Dabac 31 DF Du Wenxiang 32 DF Lü Haidong

Notable players

Peng Weiguo Gao Feng Fu Bin Zhou Lin Wei Xin Xie Hui Jiang Feng Ou Chuliang

Sebastián Cobelli Aílton Elizeu Ferreira Marciano Miroslav Bičanić Dean Računica Paul Rideout Giorgi Chikhradze Rachid Azzouzi

Abdeljalil El Hajji Akhrik Tsveiba Mark Williams Le Huynh Duc Zola Kiniambi Agent Sawu

Coaching staff

Position	Staff
Head coach	Liu Jingbiao
Assistant coaches	Xu Jianye Zhang Hao
Goalkeeping coach	Nico de Bree
Team physician	Yin Xijun Zhang Jian

Source: Club's Official Site

Notable Coaching Members

• Milos Hrstic
• Klaus Schlappner
• Lee Jang-Soo
• Stefano Impagliazzo

Honours

League

• Jia B Champions: 1996

Cup

• Chinese FA Cup: 2000

Youth

• U19 Adidas Youth League Champions: 2007

References

1. ^ http://www.rsssf.com/tablesc/china95.html
2. ^ http://www.rsssf.com/tablesc/china96.html
3. ^ http://www.rsssf.com/tablesa/ascup02.html#cwc
4. ^ 2011赛季中甲联赛重庆力帆球员完全名单(3.25) (Chinese)

External links

• Chongqing Lifan website
• Lifan Thailand website