Most of the teams in the Chinese Super League must change their names before the start of the 2021 season - it's all about the ban on sponsored names. This has been discussed since the end of 2019 - the fans, of course, were unhappy and asked the federation to leave the names of at least those clubs in the name of which, since the 90s, a historical sponsor for them has been mentioned. But the federation is adamant - they said there would be no exceptions, and everyone should adopt a neutral name before the start of next season. According to the South China Morning Post, teams are due to announce a new name before the end of the year. Otherwise, they may simply not be admitted to the championship, which starts in February. Dalian Pro, the team coached by Rafael Benitez, was one of the first to change its name. Back in 2019, the sponsorship Dalian Yifang changed to Dalian Pro. And in January 2020, the club introduced a new emblem. The most recent example - in December 2020, Guangzhou R&F was renamed to Guangzhou. Most likely, most of the teams will rebrand according to the same principle - they will simply be named after the city. It will be more difficult where there are several clubs from the same city. “Shenzhen” already has a completely legal name, and “Henan Jianye” does not seem to be named after the sponsor. The rest of the teams are dragging on renaming to the last, because many will also have to change the logo.
