would meet again in the 1997 FA Cup final, which saw Beijing win the cup. When professionalism was established in 1994 within the Chinese leagues it opened the door for more than one team within each city. This eventually paved the way for the first ever Chinese top-flight city derby, which took place in 2002 when Shanghai Shenhua lost 2–0 to Shanghai Zhongyuan (later renamed Inter) in front of a sold out Hongkou Football Stadium. Known as the Shanghai derby it would be the start of an intense but short rivalry between the two clubs, which reached its peak on the final day of the 2003 league season with both teams within reach of winning the league title. Shenhua won their game while Inter surprisingly lost theirs to relegation fighting club Tianjin Kangshifu. This saw critics dispute the title win and it was eventually discovered that both teams had players and officials match-fix games throughout the campaign. Shenhua would retrospectively lose their title while the Inter owners decided it was financially unviable to remain in Shanghai and relocated their team to Xi'an, which effectively ended the rivalry. With Inter Shanghai leaving the city Shenhua experienced another one of these Shanghai derbies when Shanghai United were promoted in the 2006 league season. The rivalry between the two teams never reached the same intensity as what was experienced against Inter because United had only recently relocated to the city and were building their fan base. Any development of a rivalry was ultimately cut short when Zhu Jun took over both teams and merged them together with Shenhua keeping their name. In 2012 Shanghai Shenxin moved to the city revitalizing the derby, however it was the promotion of Shanghai SIPG in 2013 that caught to fans imagination because they were formed by Xu Genbao who had previously managed Shenhua. The club's geographical location has also opened them up to rivalries with neighbouring club's Hangzhou Greentown and Jiangsu Suning where they contest in a fixture called the Yangtze Delta Derby. Later, with the relegation of Shanghai Shenxin in 2015 and then disbandment in 2020, Shanghai SIPG became the sole rival for Shenhua in Shanghai. The competition reached its peak when Shenhua beat SIPG in the 2017 Chinese FA Cup finals on aggregate and when SIPG won the super league soon after in 2018. The rivalry between the fans and the players made the new