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On February 13, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club held a meeting for the entire team ahead of the new season at the Evergrande Center; it was also the first meeting of Evergrande’s football system for the year 2017. The meeting was chaired by Liu Yongzhuo, the vice president in charge of football at Evergrande Group. Xu Jiayin, chairman of the board of directors of Evergrande Group, set goals for the team for the 2017 season: to win seven consecutive Chinese Super League titles, retain the FA Cup and Super Cup championships, and also win the AFC Champions League title, thus achieving four championships in total. He reiterated his commitment to having a team composed entirely of Chinese players by 2020. Xu Jiayin said that the goals and measures he proposed at the meeting represented the views of Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba Group’s board of directors. He stated at the meeting that from 2010 to 2016, Evergrande Football successfully achieved the four main goals of the first phase: delivering good results, building a brand, making contributions, and laying a solid foundation. The period from 2017 to 2020 represents the second phase for Evergrande Football, during which it is necessary to achieve excellent results, develop strong youth teams, and realize the goal of having an entirely Chinese squad by 2020. He said that there are three major changes between these two phases: the concept of development should shift from bringing in a large number of domestic and foreign players to focusing more on developing domestic players, reducing the number of foreign players rather than increasing it, and gradually moving toward having an entirely domestic team ; The focus of investment should shift from the club to the various youth teams ; The business model must shift from relying on ticket revenue to industrial operation.