Didier Drogba rode into China with hopes of changing Chinese football. “I think I have a little bit of experience — I come here to share that experience and some knowledge,” he said back in July.

Given the chance on a different team, he might have succeeded, and we might be writing a different story. But in Shanghai, under a bullheaded chairman who, at one time, threatened to pull his investment in FC Shenhua, Drogba’s time in China has been nothing short of disappointing.

And now he’s gone.

Drogba confirmed on Monday that he’s leaving for Turkey, where his new club, Galatasaray, has a spot in the Champions League. Through a PR company, he announced, “I am looking forward to playing in the Champions League again, against the best clubs in Europe.”

His well-compensated Shanghai running mate, Nicolas Anelka, 33, is set to leave as well. Le Sulk is currently on loan with Juventus, and it’s highly unlikely he’ll return to Shanghai.

Shenhua’s third big off-season foreign acquisition, 33-year-old Joel Griffiths (formerly of Beijing Guo’an), left the club in December for Sydney FC. The Griffiths signing didn’t have a tenth of the buzz as Anelka’s and Drogba’s, but as I wrote here in March, “No one expects him to outscore a healthy Anelka over the course of the season, but I for one wouldn’t be surprised if he outplayed him.” Well, it turns out that in seven fewer appearances, Griffiths did outscore Anelka, five goals to three.

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that FC Shenhua’s crazy chairman, Zhu Jun, may move the team out of the city. Via Shanghaiist:

As if that weren’t enough drama for Shenhua, rumors swirled late last month that team chairman Zhu Jun threatened to ditch Anelka, Drogba, and head coach Sergio Batista during a shareholders meeting. Insiders also say Zhu went as far as to claim he would move the club to another city.

James Griffiths (no relation to Joel), who keeps a good watch of his city’s team, points out that Shenhua would do much better to distribute its largesse to local players. He’s right. It takes more than a few big-name foreigners to build a successful team, and for the price of one Anelka or Drogba — who was the highest-paid player in Chinese Super League history at more than $300,000 a week — a squad could buy itself a very solid midfield.

And finally, the moment of truth: what difference did Drogba, Anelka, and Griffiths make in their brief season in Shanghai? A one-point improvement from the season before. One. Shenhua finished 8-8-14, ninth place in the 16-team CSL.

UPDATE, 1/30, 1:07 am:

As Didier #Drogba joins #Galatasaray, his contract with Shanghai Shenhua is still valid. Shenhua is preparing to report to #FIFA #ESPN

— TencentSportsさん (@TencentSports) 2013年1月30日

Shanghai’s Nicolas Anelka experiment is fast coming to an end. Multiple outlets have reported that FC Shenhua is in talks to negotiate a contract cancellation for the French striker, who seems destined to wind up with the English Premier League’s Queens Park Rangers. AFP reports via Sina that “Anelka has agreed to forgo the final year of his contract, worth $7 million, as long as Shanghai allow him to leave on a free transfer.”

“The discussion is between the club and himself, I don’t know about the specific details,” Shanghai Shenhua spokesman Ma Yue said. “But so far we haven’t got the final result.”

Daily Mail speculates that if Shenhua grants him his release, other top clubs may be interested in his services as well:

The talks to cancel his contract have encouraged QPR and West Ham but have also alerted other Premier League suitors who were initially wary that Shanghai would demand a fee for Anelka in January.

Anelka — “Le Sulk” — made 22 appearances with Shanghai this past season, his first in China. His Chinese Super League debut — in the “National Derby” at Beijing’s Workers Stadium — was met with much fanfare, though as I pointed out at the time, despite netting a goal, his impact on the game was minimal (a 3-2 Shanghai loss). The team seemed to find its stride with the addition of Didier Drogba, but Shenhua still finished 9th in the 16-team league, with Anelka finding the back of the net only three times.

AFP again:

The 33-year-old has said the season was the biggest challenge of his career, as he tried to stop the rot eating away at the team and mould an inexperienced group of players into a side capable of winning the increasingly competitive Chinese Super League.

“The team is very young and, apart from the foreign recruits, lacks experience,” Anelka, who rarely gives interviews, told France’s Le Journal du Dimanche after Tigana was sacked. “We’re starting from zero.”

His team of choice, QPR, is currently second-to-last in the Premier League with a -15 goal differential after 17 matches.

Unlike Shanghai teammate Nicolas Anelka’s rather tepid Chinese Super League debut, Didier Drogba made quite the impact yesterday in his first CSL match. Coming on as a sub after halftime, Drogba’s first touch of the ball was a 40-yard free kick that AFP aptly described as “outrageous” (video of this strike appears after the jump). The former Chelsea striker would go on to set up his team’s only goal, a beautiful through-ball into the box that teammate Cao Yunding converts in the 68th minute, to help Shenhua earn an away draw vs. Guangzhou R&F.

A video of game highlights is after the jump, along with Youku videos for those in China.

Ridiculous free kick:

Game highlights:

Shanghai FC Shenhua has a problem with prima donnas, specifically one Nicolas Anelka, currently the highest paid player in the Chinese Super League. Last month, according to the Telegraph, he threatened to quit the team, whining, “If there is still no one to support me and (they) continue to play little tricks behind my back… then I will quickly decide whether or not to retire.” A little earlier, according to Wild East Football, Anelka said at a press conference, “In my opinion, the most important area in football is the midfield, if Drogba comes, and no-one can pass to him, then that is no use.” He spared no potshots for his current teammates: “They are too young and their experience is not enough. Our tactical problems need to be solved, these are the reasons why we are not scoring goals… I’m amazed by Chinese football, there is quite a gap with the European game, such things can only be improved through better training.”

Things aren’t likely to get less dramatic now that Shenhua is expected to ink Drogba to a contract that will make him the new highest paid player in the CSL. (That won’t make things awkward with Le Sulk, not at all.) But the signing process has been… frustrating. According to ESPN:

Shanghai Shenhua owner Zhu Jun is confident that Chelsea striker Didier Drogba will announce his arrival at the Chinese club in the coming days.

…

“You should ask this question to Drogba’s management,” Zhu Jun told reporters asking when the announcement would come. “We have put in great effort for nearly half a year and particularly last week, when we met with his management team to reach a unanimous agreement on some crucial points.

“As of this morning, things are developing in the right direction, but I don’t know if Drogba will announce he is joining us today. Right now, I really don’t know. Maybe I can give you all an answer tomorrow, maybe we need to wait a few more days. Who knows?”

Well, that’s good. Who knows? Let us all wait, like the boss himself — the man who will be paying this 34-year-old, on-the-decline player a reported 888,000 RMB per week.

But… what are we waiting for, exactly?

The video game magnate who runs the free-spending football club is just waiting for Drogba to announce his future via his personal official website.

This website. When the day comes, there better be sprinkles, flash explosions, and, like, twenty pop-up ads for free ice cream and mp3 downloads. Otherwise, Shanghai fans and management will have been held hostage to the whims of a star football player’s personal website webmaster. 

UPDATE, 6/20, 10:52 pm:

Sure enough:

One month after sealing Chelsea’s victory in the European Champions League final, Didier Drogba signed with Shanghai Shenhua on a two-year contract that will reportedly make him China’s highest-paid player.

Shanghai confirmed the signing on Wednesday, and Drogba said on his website he will join the Chinese Super League team in the country’s financial hub next month.

No details were given on Shanghai’s offer, although local media reported the club was willing to pay as much as $15 million per year.

[Associated Press]

The most expensive player in Chinese soccer history made his belated Super League debut yesterday in Beijing after sitting out last week’s CSL opener with a knee injury. About 51,000 people packed Workers Stadium to see it. Even without Anelka, the 33-year-old striker nicknamed “Le Sulk” during his time at Arsenal, the game probably would have drawn massive interest, considering it was the National Derby, played between hated rivals Beijing Guoan and Shanghai Shenhua, and it was Beijing’s home opener. But Anelka’s presence, at the very least, piqued the attention of international media. “Former Chelsea striker brought a crowd of 51,000 to its feet,” read the sub-head on a Goal.com story (neglecting to mention that many of them were chanting “stupid cunt” at anything that moved); ESPN wrote, “Nicolas Anelka made an instant impact in Chinese football on his Shanghai Shenhua debut”; Xinhua called him “impressive.”

None of the praise is really merited, you know. Perhaps hampered by his injury — which would be a fine excuse — Anelka actually did very little. His goal was the result of a defender’s gift, an egregious error in the backfield by Ma Nu at the 4:19 mark in the above video. He had a few bright spots — a nice 25-yard-run in the 12th minute (0:27 mark) before the ball got poked away, and a seeing-eye through-ball at the 34th minute (1:48 mark) — but there was also a lot of standing around and some remarkably feeble attempts at controlling goal kicks (which I didn’t include in the above because he never actually “touched” the ball in those instances).

I’m not faulting Anelka, though. Compared to some of his teammates, he did just fine. Shenhua got dominated in the first half and outplayed over 90 minutes — they were lucky to have scored any goal at all (their first came courtesy of a handball in the penalty box). The team finished 11th out of 16 in the CSL last year, and it looks like it’ll be a battle for them to enter the league’s upper echelon even with their $14.1 million import.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a word about Australian Joel Griffiths, who switched from Beijing to Shanghai after last season, drawing the ire of some Guoan fans who think he sold out. He was the one who caused the Guoan handball before converting the penalty, his second goal in two league games. No one expects him to outscore a healthy Anelka over the course of the season, but I for one wouldn’t be surprised if he outplayed him.

The entire game:

Editor’s note: remember when we asked you to suggest heckles for Frenchman Nicolas Anelka? Well, the game’s over. This man has won.

By TAR Nation

So… the French. Their language sounds like a bit of old pudding being forced through a keyhole. Their attitude and manners are somewhere between a toaster and mildly mentally-deficient groundhog. And their only useful purpose, as far as I can see, is keeping the Germans away from the Spaniards, who seem really quite nice.

The French are rubbish. I am obliged to say that my hatred of the French is not politically motivated. I rather admire their welfare state, amazing health care and social services as well as their delicious and delicate cuisine, but do they really have to be so fucking French about it?

Even things named after the French are rubbish. French windows should just be renamed “really inconvenient windows that are hard to open and cause air conditioners to fall out.” French kissing is just lazy oral sex on your face. And a French press is a way to make your coffee taste like a sock. Yes, French fries and French toast are awesome, but they were concessions of the Imperial Potato, Cinnamon and Assorted Condiment Wars of the early 19th Century.

They don’t produce any decent cars, their military is a waste of epaulets, their countryside is full of stinking flowers, their dogs shit everywhere in the cities, they riot every time they are short on chocolate bread, and, also, I have it on good authority that they spend every day and night rubbing shampoo into little kittens’ eyes. Oh, and one more thing, the entire country is full of fucking French people. Everywhere. Every. Where.

The French are a bunch of rotten, no good, filthy, hairy, sweaty, Calais-stealing, smelly, ostentatious, cheese-eating, pompous, swamp-dwelling, wine-swilling, conceited, debauched, lecherous, decadent, grubby, putrid, rude, sappy, wicked, scandalous, pretentious, smug gits and ninnyhammers.

Anelka plays in Beijing tonight.

Our contributor is a recovering journalist and part-time alcoholic living in Beijing.

Charles Platiau / Reuters, via Time: tinyurl.com/6nfuljx

Before you go racing to Workers Stadium though, you should know Anelka — the former Chelsea and French national team star — may not play tonight due to injury (game-time decision). Also, you may not want to chant “French Concession,” considering the last guy who used that phrase publicly got fined 47,500 yuan. And really, the taunt only works if Anelka scores an own goal. But all that aside – it’s Beijing Guoan FC’s home opener, which is always exciting; Guoan finished 2nd last year in the Chinese Super League and won the whole damn thing in 2009; and the opponent is Shanghai. Do we need to remind you how much we hate Shanghai?

Anyway, after the jump, a few more creative ways to tell Le Pout to — in American vernacular — suck it. And readers, be more like E, who g-chatted “French Concession” to me, and submit some heckles of your own.

“All I keep thinking of are jorts.”

“Son of a whore.” And related: “Rayyy-mond.”

“You are French! You are French!”

Tonight also marks the homecoming of former Guoan star Joel Griffiths, who plays for Shanghai. Think Johnny Damon going from the Red Sox to the Yankees. It’s like that. Sort of. Probably not.