This is the highest-scoring team the world has seen. And they’re coached by an Aussie

The best way to understand the true extent of Shanghai Port FC’s dominance in the Chinese Super League under Kevin Muscat this season – assuming you don’t have time for full match replays and can’t get over there to see it for yourself – is through the numbers.

Here are their past five league results: 5-1, 5-0, 8-1, 1-0, 7-2. After 23 matches, they sit unbeaten on top of the table, five points clear of their nearest rivals, having scored an almost unfathomable 80 goals – which works out at an average of 3.5 goals per 90 minutes. And when you place that statistic into full historical context, the significance of what they are achieving becomes crystal clear, not just in terms of another Australian coach doing something special somewhere, but in terms of anyone doing anything, anywhere.

No team in world football has scored as freely as Muscat’s Shanghai Port for almost four decades – aside from Erik ten Hag’s Ajax from the 2018-19 Eredivisie, who they are tied with. Everyone else is in the dust. That’s according to Sports-Reference.com’s Stathead database, which goes as far back as 1987, and includes leagues in more than 40 countries, albeit with spotty coverage in some before the year 2000. It’s all relative, of course, but no matter which way you look at it, or which dataset you want to use, it’s impressive.

The obvious caveat – as mentioned repeatedly by Muscat in an interview with this masthead – is that Shanghai Port haven’t won anything yet. Indeed, there’s still seven games to go in China’s top division, but it seems like it would take something as extraordinary as their own brand of football to knock them off course. (For the record, if they continue scoring at their current rate, they will finish on about 104 goals; not bad for a 30-game season.)

“We’re playing some good stuff,” Muscat says.

“When we get opportunities, we’re squeezing teams, and we’re not letting them off the hook – particularly at home, teams are finding it tough against us. By no stretch are we the end product, but it’s fair to say that, particularly at home games, the stadium’s alive now. There’s a lot of enjoyment in the stands, and the players have fully bought into how we want to play.”

Eyebrows were raised last year when Muscat, 51, left Japan for China instead of following in his great mentor Ange Postecoglou’s footsteps to Europe, as most people presumed he would. Shanghai Port had approached him weeks earlier; they won the Chinese Super League in 2023 but parted ways with their coach, Spaniard Javier Pereira, at the end of the year.

Their sporting director, Sun Xiang, who became the first Chinese player to feature in the UEFA Champions League with PSV Eindhoven in 2007, had a “vision” for the club to play a more attacking style of football, and targeted Muscat as the man who could bring it to life. “The whole project was appealing to me,” he says. “That fitted the way I want to play, what I want to do.”

It was perceived as a sideways move at the time, but there can be little doubt now that Muscat’s stock is continuing to rise. Obviously, with Shanghai Port being reigning champions, he took charge of a fairly sound squad, featuring Wu Lei, one of the greatest Chinese players of all time, and the former Chelsea midfielder Oscar, now 32, the last remaining big-name import from the great CSL spendathon of the mid-2010s.

“The most important thing for me was, immediately, he bought in. And not only bought in, but he led,” Muscat says. “He’s been leading from the front in everything we do – the environment, our standards, our football. He’s contributed heavily. And he’s playing with a smile on his face.”

Muscat brought in four more of Oscar’s Brazilian compatriots, including striker Gustavo (aka Gustagol), who has scored 19 times in 22 games. They have helped Shanghai Port change the way they play to match the brief Muscat was given. They have been basically unstoppable from the get-go, having already broken the CSL’s record for most consecutive wins (18 and counting).

Kevin Muscat’s first season at Shanghai Port is breaking all sorts of records.Credit: Getty

When he first arrived with his trio of Aussie assistant coaches – Ross Aloisi, Vincenzo Ierardo and Greg King – it Muscat was told it would be impossible.

“In the local media, there was a little bit of noise about, ‘This type of football can’t work in China, the Chinese players are not technical enough for it.’ And that just lit the flame a little bit more, if I’m honest,” he says. “I had a real unshakeable belief that it could work. And we’re on the right track. We’re pretty pleased. But nothing’s been achieved yet.”

The list of Australian coaches who have won men’s club titles abroad is very short. In fact, to call it a list would be charitable: it’s just Postecoglou and Muscat, who worked together once upon a time at Melbourne Victory (and South Melbourne, way back in 1996, but Muscat’s recollections of his early playing days are hazy at best).

Postecoglou made history with his 2019 crown at Yokohama F. Marinos, and helped install Muscat as his successor at the J1 League club before heading off to Scotland. Then Muscat won it in 2022. If he can guide Shanghai Port to the Chinese Super League crown, that will make it three countries he will have conquered, just like Postecoglou.

Kevin Muscat and Ange Postecoglou at Melbourne Victory in 2013.Credit: Justin McManus

Muscat’s commitment to attacking football is not just something he pinched out of Ange’s playbook. He reckons it’s always been in him, including as a player, albeit that part of his game probably overshadowed by his various on-field “indiscretions”, as he calls them, which have coloured his reputation, rightly or wrongly.

But it’s one thing to have an idea; what Postecoglou gave him was an unrivalled insight into implementation. For example, in the 2012-13 season at Victory, their team became renowned for scoring a certain type of goal, usually involving Marco Rojas and Archie Thompson – one was delivering a cutback across goal, the other was there at the back post to tap it in.

“What I learnt from Ange was that if we don’t know how we scored that goal, then how do we repeat it?” Muscat said. “Those weren’t his words, but those sorts of actions that we were scoring goals from, it was stuff straight off the training pitch in terms of patterns and intensity.”

Muscat is in absolutely no rush to make his next move. While he would clearly like to coach in Europe – he had an ill-fated six-month stint at Belgian club Sint-Truiden four years ago, and was reportedly a strong contender to take over Rangers last year – he is very happy where he is, and bristles at the continued sense of snobbery towards Asia in football circles, as if the biggest city in the world’s second-biggest country is somehow an unworthy place to work.

Brazilian striker Gustavo celebrates one of his many goals this season for Shanghai Port.Credit: Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

And it will only get better: on Friday, the draw for the remodelled AFC Champions League “Elite” will take place, and there’s no reason why they can’t win that if they keep playing as they are.

If they do, it will come with a ticket to the remodelled FIFA Club World Cup in the United States next year, if it goes ahead.

But Muscat isn’t looking further than their next game, which happens to be a derby against second-placed Shanghai Shenhua, easily the match of the CSL season so far.

“It’s wonderful place to live,” Muscat says of Shanghai.

“It’s a really good life here, and a really good club. The guys are enjoying themselves. We’re just getting on with business. Let’s just wait and see where it takes us.”

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