Wu Lei

Wu Lei made his professional debut for Shanghai East Asia on 2 September 2006, aged 14 years and 287 days, becoming the youngest player in Chinese professional football history at the time. He stayed with the club through its renaming to Shanghai SIPG, racking up 296 appearances and 151 goals before, in January 2019, moving to RCD Espanyol for a fee of around €2 million. That transfer made him the first Chinese player to score in La Liga, against Real Valladolid, and in 2020 he became the first Chinese player to score against Barcelona, with an equaliser. He made 103 appearances and scored 10 goals in Spain before returning to Shanghai, now renamed Shanghai Port, on a free transfer on 11 August 2022. Back home, Wu Lei has kept adding to a scoring record that already stood as the best in Chinese Super League history, with cited figures ranging from 165 to over 168 goals. In 2024 he broke the single-season CSL scoring record with 34 goals, surpassing the mark of 29 held by Eran Zahavi, and helped Shanghai Port to a domestic double of the league title and the FA Cup, though a knee injury kept him out of the final itself. He has since added further league titles with the club in 2025. For the national team, Wu Lei is recognised by the Chinese Football Association as the all-time top scorer, a status confirmed after Hao Haidong's tally was removed from official records in 2020. He reached his 100th cap in a friendly against Singapore on 5 June 2026. Not every international appearance has gone smoothly: at the 2023 AFC Asian Cup he was criticised for missing an open goal against Lebanon, in a tournament where China failed to score and went out at the group stage.