On the afternoon of May 18, 2019, Wu Lei signed what has surely been his most important goal with the Espanyol shirt. The Chinese striker scored the second goal of the Spanish victory against Real Sociedad, a rival that the white-and-blues will face on Sunday. That victory had two consequences for the white-and-blue entity. The first, qualifying for the Europa League, meant returning to a European competition 12 years later.
The second, the cancellation of the tour that the club had prepared for China for that same summer. Espanyol wanted to take advantage of the media repercussion of Wu Lei, whom he had signed in January 2019, in order to commercially exploit his image in the Asian giant, where he has special economic interests since the arrival of Chen Yansheng in 2016. The club white-and-blue, in fact, came to close two friendlies: one on July 27 against Kunshan FC and another, three days later, on July 30, against Paris Saint-Germain de Neymar, Mbappé and Di Maria.
The intention of the entity was to travel to Jiangsu Province, the same one he had already visited 14 years earlier, in 2005, when he was eight days on Chinese soil and played a tournament against Feyenoord and a National of Montevideo where he played a young striker, Luis Suárez, who would sign for Barça nine years later. The schedule of the preliminary qualifiers of the Europa League made that tour unfeasible, as the first of the three rounds, the one that faced Espanyol with the Icelandic Stjarnan, began on 25 July.
The club’s top management maintains the desire to be able to tour China, although this tour has been conditioned the last two summers by the descent and a pandemic that has prevented either Chen Yansheng from traveling to Barcelona or Espanyol executives have been able to take the opposite path – as they used to do, periodically – towards the Asian giant. They could do so now, with the full vaccination guideline, but the strict quarantine regulations required by the Chinese government – 21 days, 14 of which in a government center – make it unfeasible.
Wu Lei ends his contract in 2024
The tour of China is an option that Espanyol acknowledges is open. The club is waiting for the evolution of the pandemic, which at the moment makes it unviable to be able to carry out this idea this summer. This is, however, an option that will not be ruled out until January or February next year, as until then there would be time to logistically organize such a trip. Espanyol sources point out to ARA that, being a commercial and non-sporting tour, it is most likely that it was once the season was over, between May and June, and not pre-season.
If it cannot be the summer of 2022, the entity could study this possibility in 2023 or, at the latest, in 2024. This would be a deadline, as June 30 of that year ends the contract that Wu Lei has with Espanyol. If he is still linked to the white-and-blue entity, the Chinese striker will then be 33 years old, an age at which he could hardly renew seeing, at least, the prominence he has today. In any case, Espanyol wants to try to take advantage of the appeal that Wu Lei has in China, where he is a real idol both for the prominence he had in the Shanghai SIPG and for what he maintains with the national team.
Espanyol would not be the only party to benefit from a tour of China. The League also wants one of its clubs to be able to tread on the Asian country because of its commercial interests (China and the United States are its two main markets). The head of the international network of the League, Octavi Anoro, says that a trip from Espanyol to China with Wu Lei “would be the icing on the cake, would have a big impact and would be very popular with local fans.”
“It is a priority for our international strategy that the clubs are close to the fans, this makes a difference,” adds Anoro. The League, in fact, has a program that provides logistical and financial support to clubs with interests in certain markets. Two more Catalan clubs have already benefited: Barça when they traveled to Japan in 2019 and Girona in 2018, when they visited India. The idea of the employer is to be able to resume this type of travel, which have been suspended due to the pandemic, when the covid allows it.
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