Gansu Tianma

Gansu Tianma are a fascinating footnote in football history, a club from the remote northwest Chinese city of Lanzhou who achieved brief international notoriety in 2003 when they signed Paul Gascoigne for four games in the Chinese Jia League. Founded in 1999, Tianma operated for just a few years before being renamed Ningbo Yaoma and eventually folding, but Gascoigne's fleeting presence ensured the club would never be entirely forgotten. Founded in 1999, Gansu Tianma were based in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. They competed in the Chinese Jia League, the second tier of Chinese football. The club was later renamed Ningbo Yaoma before folding. Their colours were blue. The club is now defunct. Gansu Tianma's blue kits from their short existence in the Chinese Jia League are curiosities rather than classics, but they carry an outsized historical interest thanks to Paul Gascoigne's four-game stint with the club in 2003. The sight of one of England's most iconic footballers pulling on a blue Tianma shirt in Lanzhou remains one of the stranger chapters in Gascoigne's remarkable career, and for collectors of football oddities, a Gansu Tianma shirt from that era is a genuine piece of the game's eccentric history.