Beijing Guoan

The pull of the Workers' Stadium is such that when it was knocked down in 2020, the club had to wait three years before playing at home again. That was the second displacement in its short life: the ground had already gone under the builders before the 2008 Olympics, and for those three seasons Beijing Guoan made do with the Fengtai Stadium across town. The new arena took the side back in 2023.

The name has changed almost as often as the address. A South Korean carmaker's money turned the club into Beijing Hyundai from 2003 to 2005. Sinobo Group, which had taken 64% of the shares, put its own name in front for four seasons from 2017, then bought the remaining 36% from CITIC Limited in 2021 and dropped the sponsor's word again. Behind all of it sits the founding arrangement of 29 December 1992, when a state side was reorganised into a professional club under CITIC Guoan and the city sports committee.

The one league title came in 2009. The cups have been kinder — four Chinese FA Cups, the last of them in 2018. Dark green has been the home shirt since 1994, and the badge carries green and gold, which is where the nickname sits comfortably: Yulinjun, the Imperial Guards.

What sharpens the season, though, is Shanghai Shenhua. Beijing against Shanghai is the fixture Chinese football arranges itself around — the capital and the commercial city, two crowds who need no further explanation of what is at stake, and who will remind anyone who asks how long it has been since the other lot won there.