Welcome to Foreign PolicyOverview of China.
This week, like FIFA World Cup High temperature in North America, we examine the state of Chinese football and why—despite repeated attempts at reform—it has not been successful on the international stage.
Welcome to Foreign PolicyOverview of China.
This week, like FIFA World Cup High temperature in North America, we examine the state of Chinese football and why—despite repeated attempts at reform—it has not been successful on the international stage.
China’s failed soccer ambitions
Chinese fans are once again lamenting the absence of their national team World Cup. The disappointment is especially big because this year’s tournament increased from 32 to 48 teams, including a record nine from the Asian Football Confederation, where the Chinese team is participating.
China has reached the World Cup only once, in 2002, when it was eliminated in the group stage without scoring a single goal. Although Chinese fans are used to seeing regional rivals Japan and South Korea easily qualify for the tournament, lose out for foreigners like Jordan and Uzbekistan it is hard to swallow.
The poor performance of the Chinese men’s national team is somewhat puzzling. He enjoys soccer great popularity in China, and the Chinese Premier League is one of the most attended leagues in the world. Meanwhile, the Chinese women’s national team—The Steel Roses—has appeared in every FIFA Women’s World Cup since 1991, except for 2011.
There is no shortage of explanations for this power. Analysts have mentioned China’s edge professional pressures and the lack of opportunities for youth football, as well as the prevalence of corruption and harassment in the top down sports system in the country.
What interests me is not only the existence of these problems but China’s inability to solve them. Soccer is a personal priority for Chinese President Xi Jinping, a longtime fan of the game. In 2011, before becoming president, Xi explained three wishes for Chinese football: qualifying for the World Cup, hosting the World Cup, and winning the World Cup.
Fifteen years later, China is nowhere near those goals, despite billions of dollars investment; regular anti-corruption campaigns; and large, government-backed push to turn China into a “first-class football power” by 2050.
Part of the problem is that China’s domestic league is large and lucrative enough to keep talented players from seeking opportunities abroad, but is so riddled with incompetence and corruption that these talents often go to waste.
Not a single player in the current Chinese national team plays for a foreign club; in contrast, only eight members of the US squad play in Major League Soccer, the weaker US league with several Canadian teams. Chinese players often go abroad during their youth but rarely stay abroad at the senior level.
Instead of bringing back valuable competitive experience to grow the game at home, many Chinese players are spending their lives stuck in the system falling teamsincompetent coaches, unpaid wagesand pay-to-play scams.
China also cannot easily copy the model used by Qatarfor example-that is to say, give a bunch of foreign players Chinese citizenship and buy their way to a half-respected team. Chinese football continues to struggle with it racism and ethnic nationalism, creating a hostile environment for non-ethnic Chinese players.
The biggest problem, however, is still corruption. In January, Chinese authorities announced tougher penalties for match-fixing and other forms of bribery, including life imprisonment. 73 players and officials. Many were already serving prison terms, including Li Tie, a former national team coach and former star player.
Most of the officers punished this time came to power after waves of arrests had previously ousted their predecessors. Before Xi took power, Chinese football was shaken due to a major match-fixing scandal and a multi-year investigation that led to senior officials being jailed, stripped of the league championship and reforms that ultimately failed to eliminate corruption in the game.
Ironically, Xi’s passion for soccer may have contributed to the problem. A familiar pattern has emerged in many sectors, from People’s Liberation Army rocket force for those supported by the government”Big Bag“Promoting semiconductor development.” Once an area becomes a national priority, the money that flows into it creates a strong incentive for corruption and few institutions are strong enough to expose embezzlement or abuse.
Corruption has also made things difficult for the succession of foreign coaches brought in to revive the Chinese national team. They have repeatedly found themselves squeezed by vested interests and a corrupt sports system where Chinese Communist Party officials have the final say. It is hard to imagine a foreign coach being given much freedom in China.
South Korea, on the other hand, gave Dutch manager Guus Hiddink full authority on the selection, strategy and training of the national team before the 2002 World Cup. Hiddink broke long-standing norms—for example, that older players were seen as better than younger ones—and led the team on a remarkable run. semi finals that year.
When China made a big Olympic push before hosting the 2008 Games, it benefited from the central nature of its approach.
Instructing young athletes in sports such as target shooting or diving involved little interaction with existing institutions and very little money. Individual sports also require only a few elite competitors capable of winning gold, while building a soccer culture requires deep and competitive talent pools.
Today, many Chinese soccer fans have placed their hopes on rural leagues that have done just that it increased in popularity in the last two or more years. Perhaps the key to unlocking the country’s great potential will be found there: Among the 1.4 billion people, perhaps there are future stars whose talents have not been developed.
But the depressing possibility is that any ground-breaking gains will eventually be taken over by existing sports authorities and mired in the same problems that have long plagued Chinese sport.
