Xu appointed Claude Lowitz, a French youth coach in the Base, as the team manager.

The team played their home games at Genbao Football Base Arena training ground in Chongming, Shanghai, and eventually finished their first season in seventh place.

During the campaign, Xu's players broke a few records during the season, with Cao Yunding being the youngest Chinese goalscorer aged 16 years and 242 days,[5] and Wu Lei the youngest Chinese professional footballer, aged only 14 years and 287 days.

Xu Genbao took up the management post himself and led the team to win gold in the men's football tournament.

They finished the season in fourth place and just missed out on promotion by a single win, but it was still considered quite an achievement because that team was made up of players under 20 years old, and with no foreign imports.

The 2010 league season saw former Chinese international Fan Zhiyi receive his first management job at the club as well as the introduction of their first-ever foreign players in Macedonian Nikola Karçev and Haitian Fabrice Noël.

Failure to gain promotion and financial difficulties caused the club unable to hold onto their rising stars.

[13] During the 2015 winter transfer window, Shanghai SIPG signed eight new players to strengthen the squad: Sun Xiang, Davi Rodrigues de Jesus, Dario Conca, Kim Ju-Young, Yang Boyu, Shi Ke, Jean Evrard Kouassi, and Yu Hai – who the club spent 50 million Yuan on.

The club signed former AFC Champions League & CSL golden boot winner Elkeson from Guangzhou Evergrande for €18.5 million.

On 9 February, the team secured a 3–0 victory over Muang Thong United from Thailand in the AFC Champions League qualification round, and successfully went in to the group stage of the ACL.

During the summer transfer window, Shanghai SIPG spent €56 million to sign the Brazilian international Hulk.

In 2018, Shanghai rode the momentum of Wu Lei, who was the league's top scorer in that year, to win their first-ever CSL title.

[20] Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply.