According to multiple reports, Chelsea have dropped Diego Costa for Saturday’s match against Leicester City amidst an argument between the Spanish forward and the Chelsea training staff and a lucrative offer from the Chinese Super League.

China is not a nation you’d list when thinking about the world’s footballing elite. But President Xi Jinping is hoping to change that. Last year, China unveiled a plan to “become a footballing juggernaut by 2050”. The country is spending more money to attract players, including some of the game’s biggest names, to move to China.

The exorbitant fees that the Chinese Super League has been willing to pay to land the world’s best look like peanuts compared to what one unnamed CSL club was willing to pay Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo to bring the Ballon d’Or winner to East Asia.

According to The Telegraph, Chelsea’s Brazilian attacker Oscar is on the verge of completing a historic transfer to Chinese Super League club Shanghai SIPG. SIPG made waves back in June by signing Hulk for a record fee of £47.5 millionNea, but Oscar looks set to join his fellow Brazilian and smash that record in the process.

The player goes where the heart (or the multimillion-dollar investment) is.

This year we have seen a surge in Chinese soccer investments, both in China and Europe. Chinese billionaires have been buying up European clubs and, more interestingly, they have been buying top players to take home.

China is a country that is in love with football. They also are the planet's most populated country, with over 1.4 billion people. So you would figure, with these two characteristics, they would be a footballing power to rival the best in Europe and South America. But they’re not. They’re actually horrible at the beautiful game, and President Xi Jinping wants to fix that.