Guizhou Renhe F.C. - History

History

The club was founded on February 1995 in Pudong, Shanghai to take part in the recently formed fully professional football league system and they started at the bottom of the football pyramid in the third division, where they named themselves Shanghai Pudong. Playing in all blue in their debut season, they would immediately taste success when they won the division title and promotion to the second tier. The following seasons, however, saw the team languish within the division until they brought in Xu Genbao to manage the side at the beginning of the 2000 season and would make the club promotion contenders. Under Xu Genbao's leadership, they didn't have to wait long to win promotion when they would go on to win the division title at the end of the season and a chance to play in the top tier. Under the ownership of Shanghai Yungtay Engineering and COSCO Real Estate, the club rebranded themselves with a new blue and white striped football kit. They were big spenders who wanted to achieve immediate success by bringing in established Chinese internationals such as Cheng Yaodong, Jiang Jin and particularly Wu Chengying who set a Chinese transfer fee record of 13,000,000 RMB. This saw them become genuine title contenders and under their new manager Cheng Yaodong, they would fight for the league title with Shanghai Shenhua and only come second by a single point at the end of the 2003 season.

The owners could not maintain the level of spending that they had done and the team's results would start to slip. Finding that they could not compete with Shanghai Shenhua and in the 2005 season, they had to face additional competition in Shanghai Zobon, the team decided to move to Xi'an after months of speculation. With the newly branded team known as Shanghai International, or Inter Shanghai by the fans, they would start to move away from the previous Yuanshen Stadium to the Shaanxi Province Stadium and renamed themselves Xi'an Chanba International' by 2006. In 2007, their ownership was transferred to Baorong Investment and it was during this period that the club would start to experiment with a new yellow football kit. This would surprisingly seem to work when the club looked as if they were title contenders once more during the 2008 season, however their title hopes quickly faded and the team eventually finished fifth. The following season, however, would see the team languish near the bottom of the table and Cheng Yaodong decided to resign, which would see former Chinese national football coach Zhu Guanghu come in and guide the team away from the relegation zone.

At the beginning of the 2010 season, Dia Yongge and the Renhe Commercial Holdings Company would start to invest heavily within the club. This would see the club bring in Chinese internationals Sun Jihai, Zhao Xuri, Qu Bo and Mao Jianqing into the team. However, despite the signings, the club struggled within the league and Zhu Guanghu left the club while three time Chinese league winner Milorad Kosanović replaced him. Milorad Kosanović's reign at the club was unsuccessful and he was soon replaced by Slobodan Santrač. After a poor string of results, Slobodan Santrač was fired and former Chinese international manager Gao Hongbo came into the club while it languished in mid-table throughout much of the 2011 season. After another disappointing season, Dia Yongge would start to get frustrated at the team's lack of success and decided to take advantage of Guiyang's government promise of the recently developed Guiyang Olympic Centre for the club, and with Renhe Commercial Holdings Company having better business connections within Guiyang, the club decided that it would move the team, which has recently made them one of the best supported teams in China. The 2012 season saw Guizhou have a successful year, with the club achieving fourth place and gaining entry into its first AFC Champions League.