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We're all wondering: Why is China so bad at soccer?

As the Euro Cup moves towards Sunday's championship match, China's own soccer team is watching from the sidelines after being ousted in the qualifying rounds for the 2010 World Cup, hoping for a more succesful performance in August's Olympic matches. The team's disappointing play has led to an outpouring of netizen analysis about how the world's most populous nation is seemingly unable to assemble a solid eleven-man line up. Some of the speculation is informative, some not so much. Here are our picks:



  • Australian football writer Jesse Fink says the Chinese team lacks patience and the ability to keep cool under extreme pressure. But there is one thing it has plenty of: fightin' spirit. Among recent instances of player aggression is the "Battle of Harlington," shown in the video above, in which a March 2007 training match turned into a massive fistfight. The Times of London offered the following undignified description:
    "...a serious mass confrontation with comic undertones as several of the China team attempted sub-Bruce Lee maneuvers in front of fewer than 150 people at a chilly training ground near Heathrow."
    Ouch.
  • The Chinese may suck at soccer, but they sure sure can write about it. Pomfret's China points out that football's new status as a national obsession has produced excellent international media coverage of the sport, relatively independent of the governmental hurdels that typically plauge hard news reporting. Titan Sports gets special mention as an especially widely-circulated, well-written source focusing especially on soccer. A semi-private publication, the paper covers corruption in the league (including the fact that many of the nation's pro matches are fixed) and criticizes government officials who let it happen. Not the type of thing we're likely to find in our favorite People's Daily.
  • Beijing TV football commentator Rowan Simons's book "Bamboo Goalposts" came out last month, and now the British author is chatting with Reuters about why the sport is supposedly dead here in China. Simons declares the football boom, with its high point at the team's appearance in the 2002 World Cup finals, has gone bust because of lack of grassroots support for the sport. The game can be resurrected only if participation by players at all levels swells while government involvement is cut off.

Video from jaywhyel

Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Hilary Faxon in on June 27, 2008 3:51 PM

Comments [rss]

  • T

    US Cruises to 4-1 win over China



    http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=436030&cc=5901



    While not an elite team, the US is at least a decent side who has snuck into the 2nd round in 2 of the last 4 World Cups, while China would not have even qualified except that Korea and Japan hosted a World Cup.



    Andy - I think you're close, but not quite there. I think one of the reasons is a lot of Chinese sport programs participants are based on childhood measurements (basketball especially) but you can't measure in childhood for things like creativity, touch and shotmaking. And if perhaps a player were to emerge in his early teens, there's few paths to put his talents on display unlike the US (school sports) or Europe/South America (club team open tryouts)

  • RUSHOUR1

    --to nanheyangrouchuan



    "the US men typically beat up on the PRC men's team"?

    Were US men salivar dropping midwest rednecks, Chinese would get more humiliated as you wished. lol!

  • McLustin

    The US has soccer?

  • nanheyangrouchuan

    Except that the US men typically beat up on the PRC men's team.



    All American Beef!

  • RUSHOUR1

    Yes, CHina's footballers is so bad that they remind me of USA.

  • China has a massive population and a commitment to national sports but the football thing is not hard to understand.



    Recent interviews with the women's team confirmed it, they are still selected to train in the old way. Kids with good running times in elementary school are shipped off to 'special' sports schools' and randomly assigned to their various sports.



    Most schools across China don't have fields or programs and Junior high schools in cities just play basketball. So the amount of China's population that is exposed to soccer playing in their early years is probably much smaller than countries with comparitively tiny popualtions.



    So it's a kind of illusion, China is large country with national sprots programs - but if you take the size of player pool, youth playing regularly in programs to pick for teams and excellence schools, they are actual a small nation.



    It's nothing to do with 'being Chinese', whatever that implies.



    Someone step in if I am way off here.

  • moneyinabox

    Chinese players lack pace, anticipation, and creativity. In other words, they are completely useless footballers.

  • nanheyangrouchuan

    A Chinese girl told me "the women's team makes Chinese girls smile, the men's team makes Chinese boys cry!". China's women don't hold up half of the sky, they hold up all of the sky. Chinese boys are too busy playing grab ass with each other, playing "village idler", smoking 6 packs a day and puking on the subway.

  • nancysitu

    geez, we're already good at math and haggling - nobody's perfect!

  • ououou

    there ain't nantional team standing for PRC

  • ououou

    hey hilary! don't you know there ain't national standing for the people's repulic of china! the FA is full of shits ,and the footballer? no more words!

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