Michael Brown: Lure of money not enough

It comes as no surprise Shane Smeltz walked out on his deal with new club Shandong Luneng just five days after arriving in China.

The 28-year-old was clearly enticed by the 500,000 reasons Shandong gave him to move - reportedly what he was set to earn playing there - but it wasn't enough to see out a two-year contract playing in the Chinese Super League.

He was expected back in Australia yesterday and Gold Coast believe he is free to rejoin them.

Money had changed hands - Smeltz had a $300,000 buyout clause in his contract, which Shandong presumably paid - but the A-League club hadn't sent off his international clearance form to complete the transfer.

"There's been an issue for Shane and he's coming home," Gold Coast's billionaire owner Clive Palmer told the Gold Coast Bulletin "We are hopeful of retaining him for the coming season ... As things stand, we don't believe we transferred him and it doesn't look like we will be, either."

Smeltz has a wife and two young children and he quickly realised his family would find it impossible to settle in Jinan, even though he arrived there only on Monday.

One of the reasons he left Wellington and joined Gold Coast 12 months ago was to be closer to family. The city of Jinan, in Shandong province, is 400km south of Beijing and 8111.8km from the Gold Coast.

Jinan is known as the City of Springs, because of the large number of natural artesian springs, but these are surrounded by huge industrial areas.

There were many disappointed in his destination of choice when he announced he was moving to China.

He was reportedly set to treble his A$170,000 wage he banked with Gold Coast. As much as Smeltz said it wasn't about money, it must have been, because it otherwise looked like a dead-end deal.

Football in China is popular but nowhere near as prominent as basketball, for example, and the country of 1.3 billion has qualified for just one World Cup in their history (2002).

There are also very few players who are picked up from the Chinese league and go on to bigger and better things. Just two went to the World Cup - South Korea's Ahn Jung Hwan didn't get on the park while Maouricio Sabillon played in Honduras' final pool game - which is fewer than the number out of the NZFC.

It's also said to be a league beset by corruption, match-fixing, violence on and off the pitch, poor administration, a neglect of grassroots football, an over-reliance on foreign talent and a diminishing fan base who are more interested in international competitions.

It would have been an easy league for Smeltz to play in, much like the A-League where he has scored 40 goals in 65 matches, but he would have struggled culturally.

Smeltz wasn't contactable yesterday but All Whites coach Ricki Herbert admitted he was a little surprised Smeltz originally settled on a move to China.

"I find it hard to believe that the China league is better than the A-League," Herbert said, "but that's a player's choice. I'm not sure that league is going to make you a better player."

A move to Europe seemed like a better fit. He is good enough to play in a decent league there and at an age when he's at his peak. He once tried his luck in England, playing among the country's lower leagues, but that was before he became known; before he scored two goals against Wales that turned his career around.

He wouldn't have wanted to play in anything other than the Premiership because strikers can take a battering below this. However, he could have played in a middling European league like the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium or even France or Germany and earned comparable money to China.

He was reportedly attracting the interest of Fulham and clubs in Germany and had previously been linked with moves to Turkey, Qatar, Japan and China. Perhaps the offers weren't there this time and, if he couldn't pick up something after a good World Cup, he probably wasn't ever likely to. The A-League will feel much better now for him.