That's Shanghai, December 2005
n a rain-soaked night somewhere in the back
streets of Glasgow, Chinese international
footballer Du Wei is lost behind the wheel
of his brand new car. Meanwhile, under the
bright lights of "The Dragon Restaurant",
word of the delay spreads among the invitation-only
crowd, a group which includes business leaders,
the city mayor and Madame Guo Guifang, Chinese
Consul in Scotland. True, the distinguished members of the press mutter impatiently, but no one makes for the door. And with good reason. The stakes are high. The 23 year old centre-back from Luoyang has just signed a four-year, USD 1.28 million contract with British football giant, Celtic Football Club (aka, the Hoops or Bhoys). If Du survives the five-month probation period, then Celtic might fatten its global market share with an additional 1.3 billion fans.
For now, the odds look good. Du Wei is arguably the most popular footballer in China, with the potential to become a global star. Indeed, his rise has been swift; at 19, he replaced the injured Fan Zhiyi to mark Manchester United footballer Cristiano Ronaldo at the 2002 World Cup, and he's been named captain of China's football team at the Beijing Olympics. Clearly, if he lives up to his name, Du Wei can do for Celtic what Yao Ming has done for the NBA's Houston Rockets.
Like Yao Ming, Du Wei made his name in Shanghai. Indeed, up until this summer he was wowing the home crowds with China's Super League Club, Shanghai Shenhua. But as he enters the Dragon Restaurant, albeit an hour late, he seems right at home. In fact, the man is oozing confidence. "I am loving it here," he tells the assembled crowd. "Football is taken seriously [in Scotland], and it is very physical. But I believe in myself. It's going to be just fine."
Of course, Du had other offers. Clubs in Germany and Italy also bid for his talent. But he chose Celtic on the advice of ex-China captain Fan Zhiyi, a close friend and fellow centre-back who spent four years playing in the UK, including a spell in Scotland in the East Coast town of Dundee.
"Fan Zhiyi recommended Scotland to me, and told me that Celtic is a very big club," says Du. "And perhaps I can adapt to the game here more easily than in some European countries."
And Celtic certainly are a huge club, albeit one with humble origins. The club was founded in 1888, by Brother Walfrid, a Marist monk, with the aim of raising money for "The Poor Children's Dinner Table", a charitable organization supporting the poorest elements of the Irish community in Glasgow's East End. Indeed, the club still maintains a strong association with the Catholic communities of Scotland, Ireland and beyond. Together with their city rivals the largely Protestant club, Glasgow Rangers, these two teams have dominated Scottish football for over 100 years. Even today, their matches are highly partisan religious contests which sometimes explode in high drama.
The club's best year came in 1967, when it won every competition it entered, including the Scottish League, the Scottish Cup, the Scottish League Cup and the Glasgow Cup. The year's crowning achievement, however, came in Lisbon when under the management of the legendary Jock Stein, they won the European Cup, the precursor of today's Champions League.
In recent years, both Rangers and Celtic have worked hard, and with some success, to combat sectarianism. Admittedly, the violent atmosphere of what locals call an "Old Firm" game can be intimidating, but at its best it makes for a tremendous game of football. That said, today's Celtic is as international as any other major club, in sporting and marketing terms alike. The club's officials are keen to emphasize that signing Du was a footballing decision - a promising defender signed at a time when Celtic's defense urgently needed shoring up. This is what the fans want to hear; football always comes first, and woe betide the club chairman who forgets that.
But this beautiful game is big business too - and hence (like many an English club before them) the turn to the East. The day after Du signed on the dotted line Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell said that: "First and foremost, Du Wei is here as a footballer whom [manager] Gordon Strachan feels has great potential." Still, he admitted there were other considerations.
"We have reached saturation point commercially in Scotland and Ireland which are our core markets," said Lawwell, "and we have to look at other areas. The Chinese market is potentially even more lucrative than the Japanese one."
Lawwell was referring to the recent USD 4.8 million signing of international Japanese midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura, and the consequent development of the club's profile in the Land of the Rising Sun. Step two in the expansion of the Celtic's global brand into the Far East, is, of course, the Chinese market.
It's a strategy which appears to be working. Within weeks of Du's signing, Shanghai Media Group bought the Chinese broadcast rights to all games from the Scottish Premier League - with a healthy share of the proceeds going Celtic's way.
Meanwhile, the club has plans of their own. "We are working to develop a Chinese website in the next six weeks," commercial director David Thomson told that's Shanghai. "We'll use it to sell appropriate merchandising to the Chinese market. Our popular 'Channel 67' service [a reference to1967, the year of Celtic's historic European Cup win] will provide subscribers with broadband content; we'll be able to broadcast matches live over the internet and so on."
If all goes according to plan, the club's green and white stripes will soon be seen on Shanghai streets. Assuming, of course, the pirates don't beat them to it. "Copyright theft is a problem for everyone in the China market," Thomson acknowledges. "But we'll be working closely with kit sponsors Nike to bring Celtic products to the market place, working through their existing retail partners - and, luckily for us, Nike have some of the strongest brand policing in the world."
Clearly, Celtic is betting heavily on Du, in the hope that, come the summer of 2008, when he leads the Chinese Olympic football team onto the field, he will be a major star. A star as big as Yao Ming and just as lucrative. But Yao is more than a big money-making tool for the Houston Rockets; he's a symbol of the new China. At the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics, he was chosen to carry the Chinese flag at the head of the national team. Since then, officials in Shanghai rewrote the rulebook and named Yao a "model worker", originally intended to honor selfless labor on the factory floor. Little wonder then, that Du cites the NBA megastar as a hero and source of inspiration.
For its part, Celtic would love their very own model worker on the books - although most observers say that Du Wei has a lot of work to do if he is going to wrestle the Olympic flag from his idol's hands. First, he needs to develop his physical presence. "My only concern," says Gordon Strachan, "is how he will cope with the frantic nature of the league here and the knocks he'll have to take. Not that he's a coward - far from it. It's just that in China he won't have experienced anything remotely like our football. But if he can get used to the style here, we will have a player on our hands."
Du certainly seems tough enough. At the Dragon Restaurant welcoming banquet he sported a black eye, acquired during a training match with Aberdeen's less refined elements. And off the pitch, he has made some rough acquaintances. At least according to a local tabloid, The Sunday Mail, which recently splashed a sensational headline across its front page: "TRIAD BOSS TARGETS CELTIC STAR". The story alleged Du's ties with a local Chinese businessman of dubious reputation, whom Du says he mistook for a die-hard football fan.
One bad apple aside, Du enjoys strong support from Scotland's 150,000 strong Chinese community and an estimated two million Celtic fans worldwide; including a growing number in the Chinese mainland. "Tell my fans in Shanghai that I miss them," he says. "The atmosphere here is very special, and the Scottish fans are very supportive. But I have always had the support of my fans at home over the years, and tell them really that I appreciate that very much."
Copyright (C) 2005 FRASER NEWHAM All Rights Reserved.