Handbags at Hongkou as Shanghai makes its case as a global derby destination

You could cut the atmosphere with a knife at the end of the Shanghai derby on Saturday evening – and some Shanghai Shenhua fans were doing just that, running their fingers across their throats as they looked to the stands above them for SIPG supporters who had braved the home end.

It was all very different 24 hours before speaking to a Chase, a Shanghainese football fan in his 20s, flying back from Hong Kong to Shanghai. He wasn’t planning on going to the game but had been to the last league meeting between the sides at Shanghai Stadium and paid handsomely for the pleasure – two tickets for 1,000 yuan. He was rewarded for that outlay with seeing a 5-0 win for SIPG, not ideal for someone, like most Shanghai’s football loving residents, who grew up supporting Shenhua.

Payback for that hammering was swift for Shenhua, winning the FA Cup on the same ground and making sure the arrivistes remained trophyless.

Incidents like that may stoke the fires but as Chase explained the divide between red and blue runs deeper, with Shanghai International Port Group’s 2012 takeover and subsequent spending losing what goodwill had existed.

At that time Shenhua were still in the Zhu Jun era, the egotistical chairman whose ownership of the club saw Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka arrive and leave supposedly unpaid. At the time Shenhua shirts were adorned with Zhu’s Firefall game – a fitting portmanteau of the free fall he put the club in and the fire sale of players, particularly Shanghainese, he oversaw.

Chase explained that he fell out of love a little with Shenhua under Zhu but mostly because of the playing style, which became too “rude”, no longer the traditional “gentle” Shanghai brand of football the club had traditionally played.