68 Players Picked in Chinese Soccer League Draft

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, January 26, 2003

68 Players Picked in Chinese Soccer League Draft

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A total of 68 Chinese players were picked in the 2003 draft for the Chinese soccer league Saturday in Beijing. Of all 44 clubs entitled to make the selection, 31 participated in Saturday's draft which featured 515 candidate players.

But only 50 players, including former international goalkeeper Jiang Jin, were picked by the first and second division clubs while 18 others picked by third division teams.

This is the first time that the Chinese Football Association (CFA) adopted a new transfer system which saw 16 players sign for their favorite clubs at will and the other 68 picked in the draft.

In the past three years, CFA had asked players to submit applications for a transfer before allowing clubs to recruit any of the applicants in the draft.

But players complained that they were restricted from signing their favorite sides under the old system. Therefore, CFA made changes to the transfer policy and allowed each club to sign one player before the draft, which gave both sides more freedom in the transfer market.

Star forward Zhang Yuning had already moved from Liaoning Bird to Shanghai Shenhua before the pick with a record transfer fee of 12 million yuan (1.4 million US dollars).

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