AFC Champions League to kick off amid high expectations

Until late last year, mainland fans had few reasons to cheer throughout the preceding decade; with the national team in decline and bribery scandals dogging the Chinese Super League and the Chinese Football Association, there was little about which to be positive.

But as Zheng Zhi and Marcello Lippi joined together to raise the AFC Champions League trophy into the Guangzhou night sky at Tianhe Stadium last November, the mood was already changing.

Guangzhou Evergrande's victory in the continental club championship - the first time a Chinese club had been crowned Asian champions since Liaoning FC in 1990 - signalled the return of Chinese soccer as a force within the regional game.

Not since the days of Dalian Wanda, and their run to the final of the old Asian Club Championship final in 1998, or the national team's qualification for the finals of the 2002 World Cup has the mood been so upbeat.

What had previously been a quietly growing undercurrent of positivism, despite the high-profile problems, finally bubbled to the surface and mainland soccer goes into the 2014 season in its most buoyant mood for close to a generation.

On and off the field, the stories are encouraging. The AFC Champions League, in the wake of Guangzhou's success, has signed up the competition's first Chinese sponsors - brewer Tsingtao and heavy machinery manufacturer SDLG inked deals at the end of last year - after a season in which the competition was watched by record numbers on television.

Those figures included more than 30 million mainland fans tuning in to watch the second leg of the final, in which Guangzhou drew 1-1 with FC Seoul to win the title on the away goals rule, the largest television audience for a sports event in China for 2013, surpassing Li Na's run to the final of the Australian Open.