Founded in March 2010, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club has won 17 championships in nine years, including two AFC Champions League titles and eight Chinese Super League titles, with a highest ranking of 30th in the world, making it one of the most successful and influential professional football clubs in Asia.
On December 1, 2019, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao defeated Shanghai Shenhua 3-0 and won the league, and became the first winner of championship for the eighth time, creating a record in the history of the Chinese Super League.
Evergrande Group invested to build a new-type football school in Qingyuan, Guangdong in 2011, with the globally largest size and the state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities. The school opened in September 2012 and set up an overseas campus in Spain in October 2014. The football school sets a goal of revitalizing Chinese football and training football stars. Internationally advanced youth football training mode and top youth football coaches were introduced to train outstanding football players aged from 9 to 18 with a high-level international competition platform.
Since opening, Evergrande Football School has been running with a "one-stop" youth football training mode, in which the young players receive a five-year special training in China and another five-year training overseas. In 2018, it started a training mechanism that enrolls the excellent young players for free. In this mechanism, the players trained do not pay for the training, competitions, meals and accommodation and clothing. Young football players aged between 9 and 13 receive youth football training at Evergrande Football School given by the world top coaches. For those excellent players above 13 years old, 25 of them will be selected every year for training on the campus in Spain, which now has 125 such excellent players, with each age from 13 to 18 having a quotation of 25. Since 2019, Evergrande Madrid Championship is held in Spain yearly. The top teams of the same age in Madrid are invited to ensure that the football players of all ages will take part in competitions with high level, high quality and high intensity weekly.
Ever since running, Evergrande Football School has invested over RMB 2.8 billion and won 77 championships in major tournaments, with 408 players having been selected into national-level football teams in China. Nearly 100 players of all ages have been selected by the Evergrande Club, and more than 3,000 young football players of all levels have been trained for football teams.
