CFA plans to offer free coach training program to jobless players
Xinhua
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Chinese Football Association plans to offer free coach training programs to jobless players from clubs that went bankrupt due to financial failures. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese Football Association (CFA) plans to offer free coach training programs to the players who are made redundant following the bankruptcy of their clubs, a CFA source said on Thursday.

Guangdong Southern Tigers and Sichuan Long, are among the nine clubs deprived by the CFA of the eligibility to attend this season's Chinese football leagues for financial failures. The two have declared bankruptcy, and more are expected to follow considering their financial strains.

"Not all the players of those bankrupt clubs can find a job, and the CFA, as the governing body of the Chinese football industry, has to help them," a CFA source told Xinhua.

"We plan to offer them free coach training programs. We hope we can help them become coaches who are in noticeably short supply at the grassroots levels," the source added.

Several players claimed to be left in dire straits after their clubs went bankrupt without paying their salaries.

Qiu Shengjiong, a former player of Guangdong Southern Tigers, revealed that the club became debt-ridden from 2019 and could not pay players' salaries.

Several players of the second-tier side Liaoning Hongyun club threatened to take legal actions if they cannot get their overdue pay from the club.

Their captain Sang Yifei said last Wednesday that he and his teammates received no salary for the whole 2019 season.

"The players got no money for the whole year, but it is true that the club had no money to give us," he wrote on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform.

Three second-tier clubs and six third-tier ones were disqualified by the CFA from taking part in this season's Chinese football leagues - which have been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak - for failing to pay their players and staff in full for the 2019 season.

The CFA announced last October that failure to pay salaries on time would result in disqualification from the following season's professional leagues.