Chinese football clubs snap up Okada, Tigana next

The Chinese spending spree which has already lured Nicolas Anelka snapped up ex-Japan football coach Takeshi Okada on Thursday, with French handler Jean Tigana expected to follow within days. Hangzhou Greentown revealed the signing of Okada, who was pictured on their microblog smiling and holding a shirt with the number 99. A club official said more details would be released later. "We are busy now as Takeshi Okada is in Hangzhou now. The contract has been signed this morning. There will be a press conference on December 24," the official told AFP. Separately Shanghai Shenhua, the new club of French striker Anelka, said former Fulham and Monaco boss Tigana was headed to China for final contract talks and was expected to sign on Sunday. "Tigana will land in Shanghai this Saturday for the final round of talks about the contract," a spokesman said. "Barring unforeseen circumstances, we will sign the contract on the next day and Tigana will see the press on Sunday." The quickfire developments follow Shanghai's landmark announcement on Monday that they had signed 32-year-old Anelka, the Super League's highest profile recruit by far. Chinese football has long been mired in scandal, but clubs enriched by the country's industrial boom are suddenly spending big on players, starting with $10 million Argentine midfielder Dario Conca in July. Anelka will reportedly more than double his current pay packet at English Premier League club Chelsea with wages of $313,000 a week, though Shanghai have disputed the figure. Tigana would be one of China's most respected coaches alongside Shenzhen Ruby's Philippe Troussier and Okada, who took Japan to the knock-out stages of last year's World Cup in South Africa. Okada, who becomes the Super League's only Japanese coach, was set to speak to Japanese media at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday. By taking the Hangzhou job, Okada is vaulting an enormous political divide stemming from the war-time atrocities committed by invading Japanese troops, a source of enduring friction. At the 2004 Asian Cup in China, local spectators booed the Japanese national anthem, and the event ended with a near-riot after the final in Beijing, where Japan beat China 3-1 aided by a controversial handball goal. At the 2008 East Asian championships in Chongqing, spectators again booed the Japanese anthem, continuously jeered Japanese players and burned Japan's national flags.