Wuhan Three Towns: Access to regroup, or absorb more Cangzhou players to join in the future

Reporter Lu Mi reports On January 6, the Chinese Football Association announced the 2025 season of the professional league access list, Wuhan Three Towns is impressively listed, with the support of the local government, the club's survival problem in the new season and even in the future has been solved, and they have now started winter training in Jiangmen, Guangdong. The new coach Felipe Martins and his team arrived in Wuhan yesterday and will start training with the team in the near future. Because many of the main players, including Liu Dianzuo, Zhang Xiaobin and Tao Qianglong, have been determined to leave the team, the lineup structure of the new season of the Three Towns is destined to change its face.

From mid to late December last year, the three towns of Wuhan worked hard to resolve the international lawsuits, and also completed last year's debt settlement work, and completed the access procedures at the stuck point. A large part of the reason is that it has received support from the government, which will continue to be funded by the government and the Sports Bureau in the future to provide security for the operation of the club for a period of time in the future. As the only club in Wuhan's top league, and the club that won the U21 league last year and qualified for the second division, they finally left the fire for Wuhan football.

After solving the core problems, the team finally started winter training in December last year. However, a series of new problems have also followed. First of all, Rodriguez, who led the team last season, has reached a coaching agreement with the J-League team early, and Three Towns has also officially announced his departure. The club had a number of considerations when it came to finding a manager. On the one hand, it was considered to let the local coach Chen Yang take over, and on the other hand, it was still the habit of implementing the foreign coach that had always been used, and the foreign coach was still selected after screening, and finally the candidate was locked in the Portuguese Filipe Martins. Yesterday, the Martins team arrived in Wuhan and will soon join the first team who are training in Guangdong.

After the head coach is finalized, it is time to build the personnel structure for the new season, which is a big project for the three towns. When the team's access has not yet been settled, some players whose contracts have expired have basically announced their farewell to Wuhan Three Towns in the new season. The main personnel are Liu Dianzuo who has now gone to Chengdu, Zhang Xiaobin has been in Shenzhen Xinpeng City for winter training, Tao Qianglong and Liu Ruofan are close to joining Shanghai Port, and Jiang Zhipeng is pending but will basically not renew the contract with the three towns. Last season's core players have basically left, which means that the first team is facing a big change.

However, some young players such as Wumi Tijiang, Gao Yunan, Liu Yiheng, Wei Huangzhe, etc., as well as some Mesozoic veteran players Deng Hanwen, Wang Yi, Liu Yiming, Liu Yue, etc., still chose to stay in the team. Their perseverance also retained some foundation for the first team of the Three Towns. On this basis, the team also has some options in terms of personnel introduction, such as taking the lead in considering players from Hubei, Long Wei and Zheng Kaimu were the first to come to the team to participate in winter training, and then Chen Zhechao's negotiations were relatively smooth, and he also came to the three towns during this time.

After the Chinese Football Association announced the admission list, the Cangzhou Lions soon announced that they could not continue to compete in the professional league, and all their players returned to free agency. And those who came to the three towns, in addition to Zheng Kaimu, also included Shao Puliang, the main goalkeeper of the Cangzhou Lions. After that, maybe there will be some Mesozoic players coming for tryouts. In other positions, the three towns once talked about the domestic striker Zheng Haoqian that the Henan team wanted to introduce, and in addition, Wang Jinxian and Liao Chengjian from Changchun Yatai also started training with the three towns.

In terms of new foreign aid, Wuhan Three Towns has not yet been determined, and Dalan and Park Zhizhu, who still have contracts, will return to the team normally. But judging from the new coach and the new form of the club, a change of blood is also inevitable.

After solving the access problem, Wuhan Three Towns has also entered a new stage, and it is undeniable that the survival state of the club after that is bound to be different from the past championship and AFC Champions League period.

After a short period of splendor, the intermittent salary arrears experienced in the past two years, as well as the hardships of fighting for relegation, are worth summarizing the three towns. In the future, the club is bound to be more cautious in terms of salary structure and personnel introduction. This time to "survive", relying on the government and the Sports Bureau, but how to "survive", the three towns need to think of a professional and market-oriented path in line with their own development.