Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic F.C.

Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic () is a professional Chinese football club that participates in the Chinese Super League under licence from the Chinese Football Association (CFA). The team is based in Chongqing and their home stadium is the Chongqing Olympic Sports Center that has a seating capacity of 58,680. They are owned by Dangdai International Group.
The club was founded in 1995 and originally called Qianwei (Vanguard) Wuhan before making their debut in the newly developed fully professional Chinese football league system where they started in the third tier within the 1995 league season. They would quickly rise up to the top tier and experience their greatest achievement of winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup and coming fourth within the league. In 2002, they came fourth place in the last season of the Asian Cup Winners' Cup. After these achievements they struggled to replicate the same success and experienced their first relegation from the top tier in the 2006 league season. After gaining promotion in 2008 back into the top tier they were unable to remain in the top flight and were relegated once more in the 2010 season. In 2014, they finished the season at the top of Chinese League One (tier 2) division and won promotion to the Chinese Super League again. Between 2017 and 2021 the club was known as Chongqing Dangdai Lifan.
According to Forbes, Chongqing is the 9th most valuable football team in China, with a team value of $76 million, and an estimated revenue of $17 million in 2015.
History.
Establishment in Wuhan.
The club's predecessor was called Qianwei F.C. (literally Vanguard F.C.) and were originally created in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province after Hubei F.C. (est. 1954) and Wuhan F.C. merged to form the Hubei Wuhan Steelworks F.C. (later known as Optics Valley F.C., dissolved in 2008 and reborn as Wuhan Zall in 2009), which created a vacant space available in the football league in 1994. After gaining financial supports from Hubei investors, the new Qianwei club took part in the newly-developed professional Chinese football league system.
In the 1995 season, Qianwei took part in the bottom level (tier-3) of the Chinese league pyramid and finished fourth to gain promotion to the second division. In the second tier, they quickly received significant funding from the Ministry of Public Security along with the Huandao Group, a notable company in tourism industry based in Hainan, which in turn also saw the club change its name to Qianwei Huandao to represent their new stockholder. Qianwei Huandao tried to relocate their home ground in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan province, but the team finally chose to stay in Wuhan since there was no suitable stadium in Hainan to serve as the home ground. With significant investment coming into the team, they bought several former Chinese international players such as Feng Zhigang and Xu Tao to strengthen the squad. This soon paid off when the club won the second tier league and promoted to the top tier at the end of the 1996 league season.
Moved to Chongqing.
In the top tier the owners decided that the club needed to affiliate itself with a major region that had a great football fan population, so they decided to move to the nearby city of Chongqing and chose the Datianwan Stadium as their new home ground. This was followed by more Chinese internationals such as Jiang Feng and Han Jinming joining the team and ensuring the club stayed up in the tier one at the end of the season. Ensuring that the club remain the only team within the Chongqing region, the club went on to merge and essentially take over a club in the lower level league, Chongqing Hongyan, in the following season. This was then followed by a complete shift of the club ownership. Lifan Group, a local flagship company in automobile industry, bought the club for 55,800,000 yuan on 19 August 2000 and renamed the club Chongqing Lifan F.C. While all of this was happening the club's manager Lee Jang-Soo was ensuring that the club would gradually improve each successive season and provide the club with their greatest achievement of winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup for the first time in the club's history. Chongqing Lifan would then be eligible to enter their first continental competition when they competed in the 2001–02 Asian Cup Winners' Cup and with Edson Tavares as their new manager he would lead the club to a semi-finals position where the club lost 0:2 to Anyang Cheetahs before ending the competition in fourth after losing to Al Sadd by penalty kicks after a 0:0 regular-time draw in a third-place final game.
Merged with Yunnan Hongta.
In the 2003 league season Chongqing Lifan had brought in Miloš Hrstić as their new coach, however his appointment was a disaster and the club was relegated at the end of the season. With the club desperate to remain within the top tier they would buy Yunnan Hongta's registration and merge the clubs' senior teams together allowing Chongqing Lifan to remain in the top division. Surprisingly the club would actually profit from the merger when several of the surplus players from both teams would then go on to gain investment from the Hunan Corun Group and buy Chongqing Lifan's second division registration for 20,000,000 yuan to then form Hunan Shoking. Back on the field the club would bring in Yu Dongfeng as their new manager in the 2004 league season, however because it was an expansion season the club would stagnate at the bottom of the league, safe in the knowledge that there was no relegation that season. With no relegation again in the 2005 league season there was no improvement within the team despite the change in management with Ma Lin coming in. With relegation reinstated in the 2006 league season the club brought in another change of management with Xu Hong, however for the third straight season in a row the club finished bottom of the league and were relegated at the end of the season. The club would decide to bring in a new manager and hired from within with former player Wei Xin chosen. The move would pay-off when on his second season the club won promotion back into the top tier when Chongqing came second at the end of the 2008 league season.
Dangdai era.
On 26 June 2016, Jiang Lizhang purchased 98.13% of Granada CF, setting up an affiliation, which has seen Feng Jing and Wang Zixiang go to the Spanish club, with Chongqing Lifan. On 5 January 2017, Jiang, alongside the Dangdai International Group, purchased 90% of Chongqing Lifan, renaming the club Chongqing Dangdai Lifan.
Rivalries.
Throughout Chongqing Lifan's history they have built rivalries with Sichuan Quanxing, Chengdu Blades and Chongqing F.C., whom they contested in regional derbies. The oldest of these rivalries was against Sichuan Quanxing, which was formed when the club moved to the neighbouring province of Chongqing and effectively created a local derby. With both clubs in the top tier representing two neighbouring provinces, a fierce local rivalry would form that reached its peak on 12 November 2003 in a vital league game for both teams to avoid relegation. Sichuan won 2–0 in a highly contentious game that saw Qiu Weiguo (邱卫国) from Chongqing and Marko Jovanović of Sichuan receive suspensions for their on-field behavior. This rivalry would come to end when Sichuan declared themselves defunct at the end of the 2005 league season; however, another Sichuan province club in Chengdu Blades soon took over the baton as local rivals. This was ignited on 14 April 2007 in a home league game for Chongqing Lifan that saw Chengdu win 1–0 as both teams looked to win promotion into the top tier that season. For several seasons these two clubs would fight in an intermittent rivalry until Chengdu were dissolved in 2015 after facing financial difficulties.
The Chongqing derby was contested by Chongqing Lifan and Chongqing F.C. as a local inner city rivalry. Hostilities were immediately started with the formation of Chongqing F.C. in 2010 when their owners proclaimed that the formation of their club would produce a "healthy Chongqing" football environment for the sport within the province, a term that was seen as an insult directed at Chongqing Lifan who were relegated from the top flight that season. After only one season both clubs would meet each other within the second division and had their first encounter in a league game with Chongqing F.C. playing at home as Chongqing Lifan won 4–1. The return fixture would see violence break out between the two set of fans as the rivalry intensified between the clubs. On 21 December 2013 the rivalry was cancelled when Chongqing F.C. was dissolved due to financial difficulties.
Some fans of Chongqing Lifan also regard Shijiazhuang Yongchang F.C. (a club in Hebei province) as a major rival due to the hostility between fanbases of these two clubs triggered by the transfer of Wang Dong from Shandong Tengding to Chongqing Lifan in 2014. Wang was hated by Yongchang fans because of his previously unfriendly words against another Hebei team (Hebei Zhongji, the forerunner of the current powerhouse Hebei CFFC).
Current squad.
Reserve squad.
"As of 1 March 2019"
Results.
"As of 1 April 2020".
Key