Adelaide United football director Aurelio Vidmar hopes the new relationship with Qingdao Red Lions thrives
Four Chinese imports have been training with Adelaide United’s national youth league side as Reds’ football director Aurelio Vidmar looks to expand the club’s presence in Asia.
THE first offspring from Adelaide United’s sister club Qingdao Red Lions’ relationship have landed.
After The Advertiser in September revealed the Chinese were on their way, Adelaide football director Aurelio Vidmar hopes the quartet will flourish as the Reds aim to secure a future Chinese import for its A-League side.
Chuang Tang, 22, Zhen Yu Diao, 23, and 16-year-old twins Zi Yuan Jiao and Zi Ming Jiao arrived in Adelaide last week from Qingdao.
They have been training with coach Paul Pezos’ Reds national youth league side at Angle Park.
They won’t be able to play in the competition or the Reds NPL side due to rules not allowing Adelaide’s second team to blood imports.
That is unless they are contracted to the A-League side or meet certain conditions such as owning a permanent resident visa, committing to play for Australia or have a refugee visa.
“Part of the long term strategy one day is we hope one of the foreign spots could be potentially a Chinese player,’’ Vidmar said 13 years after Shengqing Qu was the first Chinese to feature for Adelaide in the A-League.
“There’s (currently) visa issues that we’re actually not too sure about.”
Adelaide has also explored the option of loaning the Chinese to NPL clubs for the new 2019 season.
The four players have played first and second team football for Qingdao, a fourth-tier Chinese club.
They have also spent time at the Shandong Luneng Taishan Football School in Weifang which is funded by one of China’s richest soccer clubs Shandong Luneng in a province which houses 99.47 million people.
“We’re testing the waters at this stage and giving them an education here,’’ Vidmar said.
“We’re going to see how they are, how they will adapt and to see what kind of level they are playing.”
“They’re here for one more week and then they’re going back.”
The four players also arrived with Qingdao’s deputy general manager Anna Zhang.
“We’re trying to create a pathway, build a bridge to bring talented young players here and to us in China,’’ Zhang said.
“There is also more opportunities for good players from here (Adelaide) who can go and play in China.”