Shanghai SIPG

Group: B

Seeded: 9-12

Founded: 2005

Home: Shanghai Stadium, Shanghai, China

 

Shanghai SIPG – whose first team are managed by former England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson – are the latest Chinese Super League side to compete in the Soccer Sevens, following Guangzhou Evergrande’s debut in 2014.

Lu Jianjun will coach the side at Hong Kong Football Club, where the visitors will field a team of seven-a-side specialists of players in their 20s and 30s.

Shanghai SIPG’s first team, under Eriksson’s charge, started the 2015 Chinese Super League with four wins and two draws, underlining their reputation as one of the country’s fastest-growing clubs.

Xu Genbao, the former China international and head coach, founded the club in 2005 as an extension of the Genbao Football Base he created in 2000. Xu was inspired by Manchester United’s crop of youth graduates and ‘To Build a Manchester United of China’ was carved in rock at the front gate of the youth facility, which features three full-size pitches.

Featuring several players who had come through Genbao Football Base, Shanghai East Asia enjoyed a spectacular rise to the top tier of Chinese football, winning China League Two in 2007 and China League One in 2012. In 2009, the team moved into their current home ground, the 56,000-capacity Shanghai Stadium.

Before the 2013 season, SIPG (Shanghai International Port Group) signed on as title sponsor of the club. The newly named Shanghai SIPG finished ninth in the 2013 Chinese Super League and fifth the following year, and their investment in hiring Eriksson in November 2014 was another sign that the club is likely to be among China’s biggest clubs for years to come.