Jan Zhangpen

Jan Zhangpen plays his football at a club that has barely kept the same name for two seasons running. Qingdao Youth Island began life as Qingdao Zhongchuang Hengtai, was rebranded Qingdao Red Lions, and now competes under its current identity, also known as Qingdao West Coast — a churn that has shaped the environment in which the young midfielder has had to establish himself.

He has worn the number 30 shirt through that spell, operating in the middle of the park for a side still settling into its latest guise. There is no record of him having been capped by China's senior national team — his footballing story, for now, is essentially the one being written at this club.

That makes his situation fairly typical of a young player still working through the early stages of a professional career: attached to a single club, yet to force his way into a full international reckoning, and building whatever profile he has largely through what happens on the pitch for Qingdao Youth Island itself. What is clear is that he has stayed put through it, wearing the same number while the name above the crest changed twice.