Football
Michael Church, Asia correspondent 7y

Villas-Boas will alter Shanghai SIPG lineup after Western Sydney win

Andre Villas-Boas will be forced to making changes to his Shanghai SIPG team for the club's opening game of the Chinese Super League season at the weekend, despite seeing them notch up a comprehensive 5-1 win over Western Sydney Wanderers in the Asian Champions League on Tuesday evening.

SIPG were in rampant mood, with Hulk giving the home side the lead after just three minutes against the 2014 champions before Oscar doubled the advantage.

And while Mitch Nichols pulled one back for the visitors, Shanghai strode clear again with goals from Shi Ke, Elkeson and Wu Lei as SIPG picked up their third win in a row in the competition.

But with Asian Champions League regulations permitting one foreign player more than is allowed under new rules implemented for the upcoming Chinese Super League season, the Portuguese coach will be forced to alter his lineup for this weekend's opener against Changchun Yatai.

"This won't be the starting 11 for the CSL first round on Saturday," said the former Chelsea and Porto coach. "Because of the new regulations on young players and foreign players, we will need to decide on the CSL starting 11 over the next three days.

"We will see which young player is best and we have to drop one foreigner. But today our four foreign players were all good, but we have to give up one. We will make that decision before Saturday."

New regulations for the Chinese Super League were drafted in mid-January, with clubs now only permitted to field three foreign players while starting lineups must also feature one Chinese player under the age of 23.

Since the start of 2016, SIPG have signed Brazilian trio Oscar, Hulk and Elkeson for a combined fee of more than €130 million, while the club also brought in Uzbekistan international midfielder Odil Ahmedov.

Ahmedov was bought to fill the Asian player slot that existed under the previous regulations but has since been amended, a move which infuriated clubs and saw some desperately offload players from AFC nations as a result.

Shanghai, however, have held on to Ahmedov while also moving to sign promising young Chinese winger Wei Shihao on loan from Portuguese side Leixoes ahead of the new season.

Tuesday's win over Western Sydney moves Shanghai into a strong position to qualify for the knockout phase of the Asian Champions League, which returns in mid-March when SIPG take on 2008 winners Urawa Red Diamonds in the first of back-to-back games against the Japanese side.

"I'm very happy that we won," said Villas-Boas. "We played well and deserved it. Our opponents were also very tough, they fought until the last second.

"We have created lots of opportunities and it brought lots of confidence to us. We will face Urawa in the next round and the round after and these two matches will be crucial to our group ranking. We have had a great start and we hope to continue it."

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