Shanghai Shenhua

Xu Genbao coached the side that won the Jia-A League in 1995, and three of the players he is bracketed with — Qi Hong, Xie Hui and Fan Zhiyi, the Three Musketeers — remain the reference point for what Shenhua looked like when Chinese professional football was new. That 1995 title is still the only league championship on the books. The 2003 Jia-A crown was taken back by the Chinese Football Association in 2013 over match-fixing, and since the Chinese Super League began in 2004 the club has not won it.

What it has done instead is win cups. Six Chinese FA Cups — 1998, then a run from 2017 that has taken in 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025 — make Shenhua the most successful club in the competition, and five Chinese FA Super Cups sit alongside them. The 2017 final was against Shanghai SIPG, now Shanghai Port, which is the fixture that decides most Shenhua seasons: in 2024 Port took the league by a single point and Shenhua took both cups.

The team goes back further than the professional club. A municipal side was put together on 1 November 1951; the professional entity dates from 10 December 1993, when Shenhua became one of the founding members of the Jia-A League. Shanghai Jiushi Group, a state-owned sports and culture operator, took over in 2023. The academy at the Genbao Football Base on Chongming Island has supplied the defenders Zhu Chenjie and Jiang Shenglong, among others.

Drogba and Anelka both played here, briefly; Giovanni Moreno stayed long enough to be counted differently.

Since 2023 the club has played at the Shanghai Stadium in Xuhui District, capacity 72,436 — a move out of the Hongkou Football Stadium, the compact ground where the club spent its earlier professional years.