The first Super League round was a blast with a huge amount of goals and some pretty incredible results. Can this second round follow up?
It starts in just an hour when Guangzhou Evergrande will want to dish out some revenge on Changchun Yatai after their derby loss to R&F. Yatai for their part, had one of the more normal matches last time out as they drew 1-1 with Shenhua.
Tomorrow the early kick off sees Tianjin Quanjian take on Beijing Renhe. Quanjian beat Henan in the first round while Renhe didn’t give a bad account of themselves despite the 1-0 loss to Chongqing. This should be a comfortable win for Tianjin, even though they lost 6-3 in the Champions League in midweek.
The other promoted team Dalian Yifang did not have a good time last time out losing a massive 8-0 to Shanghai SIPG. They now have to try to rectify this, against Guangzhou R&F. The blue boys from Guangzhou beat their rivals Evergrande 5-4 last weekend after an Eran Zahavi hattrick and could dish out even more pain for Dalian if they can’t pull themselves together.
Shandong Luneng had a tough-looking start to the season with a match against Beijing Guoan but they won it 3-0 with relative ease. Chongqing Lifeng had a good start as they beat Beijing Renhe 1-0, as mentioned above. So this match could see one side go top and the other go mid-table, but of course it’s still early doors.
The big, big match this round is the second derby in a row as Shanghai Shenhua welcome Shanghai SIPG to the Hongkou Stadium for a replay of the Cup final from last year. SIPG won and Shenhua drew on the opening day. We will cover that game in more depth in an article coming out later today, so keep your eyes peeled for that people.
On Sunday the early kick off is Guizhou Hengfeng welcoming Hebei China Fortune to their den. Neither team got a perfect start as Hebei drew with Tianjin TEDA and Guizhou lost to Jiangsu. So a loss for either team would mean a very poor start to the season, probably more disastrous for Champions League chasing Hebei than Guizhou.
Speaking of Tianjin TEDA, they are playing Henan Jianye, and John Obi Mikel and his boys will be hoping to grab a win after the mentioned Hebei draw. Henan, on the other hand, lost 4-0 to Tianjin and after a decent season last year they may very well struggle this season if they can’t get off the mark in the first few rounds. This is winnable for both teams and neither will be happy with a draw.
The final match this round is another big one as Jiangsu Suning take on Beijing Guoan. Suning beat Guizhou 3-1, while Guoan lost to Shandong in a humiliating fashion after all their big buys this winter. Guoan will be impatient to rectify last weekend’s result while Suning will want to keep their good start going. This could be a really good football match.