“Coming back to Europe was tough. I signed in China on an 18-month deal at the time, so a year-and-a-half contract. I went there in June 2024. So I’d done six months there. And in China, there’s complications with payments, et cetera, et cetera. I got paid at the time. There were some late payments for the local players. I think at the time, the local players just had enough, literally just had enough. Basically, we were on the list. And in China, there’s a system where every end of the season, when it comes November, the team needs to sign a sheet saying that they’ve been paid, sent over to the CFA, and then the CFA approve it and say, \u2018OK, cool, you’ve paid your players, you’re on the list for next season to be in the CSL\u2019. So we did that. <\/span><\/p>\n “And then a couple of the local players have gone out – they have their own social media, they don’t have Instagram, they have their own Twitter – on their social media and said some things that the CFA saw and thought, \u2018OK, now we’re going to take you off the list, and you need to show proof, like statements, basically, that this is what you said you’ve done\u2019. So we’ve all gone back. We’ve all been put into the next season’s group chat. The lawyers are coming to the group chat and we’re seeing what’s happening.<\/span><\/p>\n “And then the money was supposed to be funded from the government, because in the clubs, a lot of the money is funded by the government of that province. The government is giving the money. The deadline was Boxing Day, and the government had given the money on the 27th. So it’s a day late. So now they’ve said, \u2018OK, you’re a day late\u2019. Basically, you’ve got to disband, they say. They tried to protest it, but I think the CSL is starting to take a stand on it in the league, because it was getting a bit ridiculous. They told our team they can’t play in the CSL or play in the Chinese Football League ever again – they’ve got to disband or declare bankruptcy. <\/span><\/p>\n “And one of the biggest teams from China, one with the most trophies, I think Paulinho used to play for them, it’s called Guangzhou. They’ve got the most championships and the most titles. They disbanded them as well. I think they were putting a statement out to the teams that, \u2018look, if you don’t go by the rules, you’re not going to play football ever again, your team’s done\u2019. And you can see now, this year, a lot of the teams have been deducted points just so that they can enforce the rules. It kind of ruined my chance or my opportunity a little bit when I was in the CSL. <\/span><\/p>\n “That was at the start of January and by then, for me to get to another CSL team, with their foreign players, there’s only five foreign spots. So you get the foreign players from November, December. So by then, it was hard to transfer to another team. I had other opportunities, playing in other countries and some to still be playing in China, but it was the league below. I didn’t really want to go down a level, because going down a level in those areas, if I was to go down, it’s very hard to go back up. But I had another opportunity to go to another country. I was kind of banking on that while I had this contract. And then they both fell through. So the timing of it was quite tough for me. I was out the window and all the teams had signed the players they really wanted. I had to just sit out for four or five months. And then come May, that’s when Finland came in and I went there.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Coming back to Europe was tough. I signed in China on an 18-month deal at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cangzhou](\"https:\/\/assets.goal.com\/images\/v3\/o21pg4te88o9s7ogsjqzohx3ga\/GettyImages-1312822269.jpg?format=pjpg&quality=60&auto=webp&width=620)