Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are looking
at the sources surrounding Oriental Dragon FC.
Glad to be here for this one. And if you follow
international football, you probably already
know the headline here. We're talking about a
Portuguese club based in Moita, playing at Campo
Santos Jorge. But it was built entirely as an
incubator for Chinese footballing talent. Right,
which is a wild premise on its own. Exactly.
But today we're skipping the basic premise. The
mission for this Deep Dive is to dig into the
actual mechanics of the operation. We want to
examine how the architects of this project hacked
the Portuguese football pyramid, the structural
loopholes they exploited to bypass aid regulations,
and why the entire experiment ultimately collapsed
when it hit the professional tiers. It really
is a phenomenal case study in sports economics.
And structural engineering, honestly. The sources
note the club was founded in 2014 and the ambition
wasn't just to field a team. The objective was
to develop young Chinese athletes within the
rigorous, highly tactical environment of European
football. With the ultimate goal being to send
them back. Yes. Send them back to elevate the
Chinese domestic league and the Chinese national
team. It was an attempt to artificially manufacture
a competitive generation of players. OK, let's
unpack this. Because to engineer a developmental
hothouse like that, you need a highly specific
infrastructure. You do. You can't just drop players
into a foreign country and hope for the best.
Right. And the mastermind behind this was an
investor named Qi Chen, who was leading a group
called WS Sports 7. Our sources indicate Chen
wasn't new to this. He had been actively working
within the intersection of Chinese and Portuguese
football since 2006. He was a known entity in
the Portuguese football landscape. In 2006 and
2007, Chen successfully arranged the transfers
of two prominent Chinese players, Yudabao and
Wang Gang, to SL Benfica. Which is huge. It's
massive. For context, Benfica operates one of
the most prestigious demanding football academies
on the planet. Placing players there requires
deep institutional trust. But the strategy shifted
drastically between those 2006 transfers and
the founding of Oriental Dragon in 2014. They
moved away from acting as a talent agency, placing
individuals into existing European academies.
Yeah, they stopped renting space and bought the
building, so to speak. Exactly. They opted to
purchase the infrastructure outright by starting
their own club. What's fascinating here is the
underlying logic of that shift. When you transfer
a top prospect to a massive club like Benfica,
you immediately lose control over their developmental
trajectory. Because Benfica doesn't care about
the Chinese national team. Right. Benfica's priority
is winning matches for Benfica. The player might
get benched, played out of position or caught
in a managerial change. By establishing Oriental
Dragon FC, Chen's group retained absolute control
over the minutes, the tactical system and the
physical conditioning of their players. The club's
primary key performance indicator was development.
Not just points on a table. That control sounds
perfect in theory, but the logistical reality
in 2014 was a completely different story. It
was a nightmare. Total nightmare. According to
the sources, the initial roster consisted exclusively
of Chinese footballers between the ages of 15
and 19. Right. And that's where you hit the legal
wall. Under the strict regulations of the Portuguese
Football Association, players under 18 were legally
barred from competing in official adult Portuguese
leagues. So they had imported an entire squad
to Europe and structurally they were just...
Blocked out. They were completely locked out
of the competitive pyramid. And you cannot develop
elite footballing talent on a diet of informal
training sessions. You need the pressure of a
structured league where points are on the line
and tactical mistakes are actually punished.
Other ones, why are you even in Europe? Exactly.
Without that environment, the entire European
experiment is effectively useless. So to solve
that, Oriental Dragon FC simply built the parallel
system. It's so audacious. They bypassed the
Portuguese FA's age restrictions by creating
and entirely funding their own U21 Youth League.
Which they branded the Future Stars League. Right.
They paid for the infrastructure and invited
local clubs from the Lisbon and Setúbal football
associations to compete. It is a brilliant, aggressive
deployment of capital to shape a competitive
environment. They couldn't enter the existing
market, so they subsidized a new one. But the
brilliance isn't just in the funding. No, it's
in how they structured the competition. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Oriental Dragon
didn't just hand over the funding to these local
Portuguese clubs with no strings attached. They
attached a strict mandate to the money. And this
is the genius part. Every single participating
team in the Future Stars League was required
to field at least one Chinese player. during
their matches. That is a masterstroke of systemic
integration. Let's look at the mechanics of that
mandate. First, you guarantee a full competitive
schedule for your own under 18 squad. Which solves
the initial problem. Yes. Second, by effectively
bribing the local clubs with funded infrastructure,
you forcefully integrate your surplus Chinese
talent into rival Portuguese squads. You aren't
just creating a league. You're creating an ecosystem.
You are orchestrating a real -time cultural and
tactical exchange program. It forces the Chinese
players out of their isolated bubble and demands
they learn the local footballing language, both
literally and figuratively, by playing alongside
local Portuguese prospects. And to ensure the
tactical education met European standards, Chen
leveraged those old ties with Benfica. The sources
note they brought in former Benfica B coaches
to run Oriental Dragon. You need that top tier
tactical mind at the helm. They also strategically
embedded themselves into the operational fabric
of an existing Portuguese club, Sidi Pinhalnovans.
They operated essentially as their second team
during those early years. Which makes sense.
It solves the back office knowledge gap perfectly.
You can hire the best coaches, but running the
day -to -day operations of a European football
club, managing facilities, local logistics, medical
staff that requires institutional knowledge.
Stuff you can't just buy off a shelf. Right.
Partnering with Pinhelm Events gave WSports 7
a functional blueprint of how a Portuguese club
operates from the inside. So fast forward to
the 2015 -2016 season. The players had aged up
and Oriental Dragon FC officially entered the
bottom of the Portuguese adult league pyramid.
The fifth tier. Specifically, the Setúbal FA
second division. They finished their debut season
in eighth place out of nine teams, fielding a
roster that included nine Chinese players. Which
raises an important question. How does a highly
technical youth squad handle the physical reality
of regional adult football? I imagine it's rough.
The fifth tier of any European pyramid is famously
unforgiving. You are dealing with seasoned physical
adult players playing on rough pitches. Transitioning
from a controlled Benfica -style possession game
in a U21 league to the gritty reality of the
fifth tier is a massive systemic shock. Yeah,
finishing eighth out of nine indicates exactly
how steep that learning curve was. They were
taking their lumps. But the sources track a staggeringly
fast adaptation. Just two years later, in the
2017 -2018 season, they finished second in the
division, securing promotion to the fourth -tier
Setubal FA First Division. That's a rapid turnaround.
And by the 2018 -2019 season, they proved they
could handle knockout pressure by reaching the
finals of the AF Setúbal Cup. The timeline of
that progression suggests the Benfica methodology
was really taking root. Once the players adapted
to the physical demands of the adult game, their
technical and tactical superiority honed in that
controlled, funded environment began to dictate
the matches. And that technical superiority became
undeniable during the 2019 -2020 season. They
completely dominated the fourth tier. They were
running away with it. Before the COVID -19 pandemic
forced the cancellation of the season, Oriental
Dragon was sitting in first place. They were
11 points clear of the second -place club, FC
Barents. An 11 -point lead is absurd at that
level. Because of that insurmountable lead, they
were awarded promotion to the Campeonato de Portugal,
which was the national third tier. The jump from
regional football in Setúbal to a national division
is the most difficult hurdle for any rising club.
Why is that jump so much harder? The travel logistics
expand across the entire country, for one. But
more importantly, the wage bills of the opposing
teams increase significantly, and you are no
longer playing part -time regional squads. You
are facing organizations with fully formed professional
ambitions. And Oriental Dragon proved they belonged
in that conversation, particularly in the Plaza
de Portugal, the National Domestic Cup. In the
2020 -2021 season, they reached the third round
and drew like signs, a professional second -tier
side. Think about that. Right. A club founded
strictly as a youth incubator took a hardened
second -tier team all the way to penalty kicks.
To bridge the resource and experience gap between
the third and second tiers in a knockout format
requires exceptional tactical discipline. A newly
promoted squad pushing an established professional
side to penalties is a severe disruption of the
expected footballing hierarchy. Well, they disrupted
it even further the following year. In the 2021
-2022 Tata de Portugal third round, they drew
more in rents. A first -tier side. A first -tier
side. We are talking about the elite televised
tier of Portuguese football. Oriental Dragon
pushed those first tier professionals to the
absolute limit. It was an incredible match. They
ultimately lost 3 -2 but it required extra time
to settle. That specific match against Moras
serves as the ultimate validation of Qi Chen's
initial thesis. A manufactured roster, heavily
featuring players incubated outside the traditional
European academy pipeline, went toe to toe with
elite professionals for over 120 minutes. It
proved the concept worked. It proved that the
laboratory environment they built could, in fact,
produce highly competitive results at the senior
level. That 2021 -2022 season was undoubtedly
the peak of the project. But it also coincided
with a structural shift in the Portuguese pyramid
that would ultimately unravel the club. Restructure.
Yeah. The Portuguese FA restructured the leagues,
creating a brand new third -tier competition
called Liga 3. This move effectively pushed the
old third tier, the Campanada de Portugal, down
to the fourth tier. Oriental Dragons' performances
earned them a spot in this newly formed Liga
3. The creation of Liga 3 was designed specifically
to serve as a bottleneck for talent. How so?
The FA wanted a more competitive, highly professionalized
bridge between the amateur leagues and the fully
professional second tier. By entering Liga 3,
Oriental Dragon was suddenly trapped in a division
packed with the most ambitious, well -funded
semi -pro and professional clubs in the country.
The margin for error completely evaporated. The
sources show exactly how ruthless that bottleneck
was. In their debut Liga 3 season, Oriental Dragon
finished dead last in their division. It was
a brutal wake -up call. The lead format then
pushed them into a sudden -death relegation series
to fight for survival. And they finished dead
last there as well. They suffered a comprehensive
systemic defeat and were relegated back to the
newly demoted fourth tier. This illustrates the
compounding dangers of rapid promotion. The squad
and the tactical system that successfully navigates
the regional tiers is rarely equipped to survive
a professional bottleneck like Liga 3. It's just
a different beast entirely. Furthermore, when
an investor backed club that relies on upward
momentum suffers a catastrophic relegation, the
structural foundation often cracks. Morale drops,
key personnel leave, and the financial reality
of funding a losing team in a lower tier really
sets in. The momentum completely inverted. The
data outlines a rapid downward slide. The season
following their relegation, 2022 -2023, they
managed only a ninth place finish in the fourth
tier. The slide had started. By the 2023 -2024
season, they had fallen all the way back to the
fifth tier AF Satubal One Iggy Vision. The exact
level where they had started their climb a decade
earlier. They finished fifth that year. The cycle
had fully reset. The infrastructure was still
there, but the competitive edge and the developmental
momentum that characterized their early rise
had entirely dissipated. Which brings us to the
final data point in the sources. Following that
2023 -2024 season in the fifth tier, Oriental
Dragon FC officially ceased operations. The 10
-year experiment came to a close. A decade of
wild highs and harsh realities. So what does
this all mean? When you review the documentation,
it is a staggering account of how an external
entity utilized capital, tactical alliances,
and sheer logistical willpower to force a new
developmental model into a traditional European
sporting structure. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, the legacy of Oriental Dragon
FC is secure as a vital case study in globalized
sports development. They expose structural loopholes
in domestic FAA regulations and prove that parallel
developmental leagues can successfully integrate
foreign talent into a local ecosystem. Even if
it didn't last forever. Right. The fact that
the club eventually dissolved under the pressure
of the professional tiers doesn't negate the
success of the methodology. International federations
and sports economists will likely analyze the
WS Sports 7 model for years to understand both
its rapid success and its ultimate unsustainability.
It is a blueprint of how to hack the system,
complete with the warning labels of what happens
when you reach the top. But before we close out
this deep dive, there is one final detail in
the sources that warrants your attention. And
it's a fascinating loose end. Even though operations
ceased in 2024, there is ongoing speculation
that Oriental Dragon FC might be renewed and
re -entered into the lower leagues. However,
the sources explicitly note that this potential
return is entirely contingent on the construction
of a hypothetical new club facility. A massive
if. Exactly. Because to date, absolutely no construction
has begun. No ground has been broken. So, as
you process the mechanics of this 10 -year experiment,
I want you to consider Is this lingering rumor
simply the wishful thinking of those who want
to see the incubator reopened? Or are the architects
quietly securing the capital to launch version
2 .0 of the Dragons? It's definitely something
to keep an eye on. Thank you for joining us for
this deep dive.