Amigos, Amigas and Santa. To be honest it's rather easy to organize a soccer tournament during the Shanghai summer of as you are more or less guaranteed perfect weather and everybody loves to play football under the sun in a nice summer breeze. To get a Santa Cup organized is a different ball game all together as you never know what the conditions will be and when its freezing cold how do you know that the players will still turn up to play?

Amigos and Amigas, After the horrific weather of the previous week we were treated with perfect weather on Sunday. It was a great weekend and some nerve wrecking results!

Dulwich 6 Super 48 0
We think both teams were happy with the result. Dulwich to keep a cleansheet and Super 48 bringing down the score every week. Hopefully this will lead to their first points soon!

Founded in back in 2003, the Shanghai Premier League is the United Nations of football in China, and the 09/10 season is about to kick off. Teams hailing from around the globe have been practising in tournaments and friendly matches recently. Players are slowly and (hopefully) surely returning to peek physical fitness in time for their first matches, just after the October holiday.

The SPL returns this season with more matches, more teams and a match ground in such good condition it took two years to  reach this pinnacle of pitch perfectness (thanks to Adam).* The referees have been sent for training to Urumuqi so they will be on top of every game and a FA licensed ref has requested the honour of blowing the whistle at the season’s kick off. In short, things are bigger and better all around and it’s set to be a fantastic season.

Need a team to play for? Want to be a cheerleader on the sidelines but don’t know any teams? Browse away below and find your SPL team for 2009/10. The deadline for player fee payments isn’t until 15th November – plenty of time shop around!

*As such, slide tacking will be frowned upon.