LHASA, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Lhasa Chengtou Football Club is dissolved and will not participate in any games held by the Chinese Football Association (CFA) next season.
The club announced the decisions in a statement released here on Monday.
According to the statement, the main reason behind the withdrawal is the dispute between CFA and the club on where to play its home matches. Lhasa Chengtou has been endeavoring to move its home field back into SW China's Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where all of the available pitches are over 3,000 meters above sea level.
Founded in 2017, Lhasa Chengtou remained the Tibet region's only professional football club up to its dissolution. At the end of 2018, the club was promoted into CFA League 2, a third-tier league below the Chinese Super League and the CFA League 1, and made its debut in the 2019 season.
The club was able to play two games in Lhasa, the TAR's capital at an altitude of 3,650 meters. In both of those matches, the referees had to suspend play every 15 minutes to let the players breathe bottled oxygen. Concerns have been raised that the thin air in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau would harm players' health.
A source from Lhasa Chengtou told Xinhua that CFA has been considering Nyingchi, a city of an altitude around 3,000 meters in the eastern part of the plateau, as the future home field for Lhasa Chengtou. With the threat of COVID-19, however, the CFA is likely to finalize the league in a tournament outside the TAR.
No further comment has been heard from the club on its future plans. Enditem
