Results tagged “football”

From Shanghai Scrap comes a very interesting article about the NFL's attempts to break into China. Most Americans don't understand that the entire rest of the world doesn't understand something as quintessentially American as football. But if you think about it, how would you translate something as esoteric as the "Wildcat" offense to a Chinese audience? These are the sort of questions that NFL China has to grapple with in their attempts to build up public interest in the sport on the mainland.

Any lingering hopes of adding to their rather bare trophy cupboard were extinguished for another year on Saturday, when Shanghai Shenhua could only tie their derby match 1-1 with Hangzhou Greentown FC. (video highlights)

One of the tightest Championship finishes in the history of world football - that's the situation Shanghai Shenhua find themselves in as the CSL 2009 season enters its closing stages this weekend. Not since 2005, when Gamba Osaka won the J-League by one point ahead of four other teams on the last day of the season, has football seen such a thrilling championship finish.

• The final Expo participants' meeting was held today in Shanghai, with 800 representatives from the 241 countries confirmed to attend. The results of the meeting: construction, exhibition, management, and planning are progressing nicely. We hope so, with 800 million tickets sold. [People's Daily]
• If wandering around Shanghai as an ex-pat isn't scary enough for you, check out Shanghai's first haunted house! It's set up in a 1902 warehouse and sounds likes it's been pretty well thought out, creepy, and generally kick-ass. [SmartShanghai]
• Shanghai Premier League (SPL) is kicking off a new season, and the deadline for player fees is November 15. So start getting in shape, sign up for a team, cheer on the sidelines, or just come out and support your city's athletes. [Urbanatomy]

What do the NFL, small Chinese children, and a Taiwanese rock band have in common? Absolutely nothing, until the NFL decided to embark on its latest effort to make professional American football popular in China.

There are few sporting spectacles which rouse passions as much as a football match between two great rivals, and Saturday night's grudge game between Shanghai Shenhua and Beijing Guoan, in the Jing-Hu Dazhan (京沪大战) , was no exception.

Saving face will be the goal of China's much-maligned international football team as it hosts Germany in a friendly international football tomorrow evening at Shanghai Stadium.

Tension will fill the air this evening at Hongkou Football Stadium when China meets Japan in a major continental club football competition. Shanghai Shenhua play host to J-League Champions Kashima Antlers in the Asian Champions League in an all-or-nothing encounter which will decide who qualifies for the knockout rounds.

The Chinese team that won an international youth championship by stacking itself with pros has said it will let go of its claim on the title, says a Sydney Morning Herald report.

We knew the Chinese Football Association was pretty terrible at what they do, but we didn't know they were quite this bad. In one of the funniest scandals to hit the beleaguered Chinese football (ahem, soccer) world, CFA players were actually able to win a world championship...

By Orlando Crowcroft

By Orlando Crowcroft

By Orlando Crowcroft

Los Angeles Sol signs Chinese player

If you watched Super Bowl XLIII in China, you missed out on what is often the best part of the show--the commercials that advertisers pay obscene amounts of money to air during the game. You can see them all and vote for your favorites here.

The fallout from Shanghai Shenhua's final day championship debacle continued today when news emerged that two of its players were involved in a late-night drunken brawl following their fateful match with local rivals Zhejiang Lvchang on Sunday.

Just one victory in their last five games and a shocking penalty miss saw Shanghai Shenhua hand the Chinese Super League title on a plate to rivals Shandong Luneng on the final day of the 2008 season on Sunday afternoon. (video highlights)

Sorry for posting about a Saturday event so late on Friday, but we spent all day looking for an Australian slang version of "craic." We're still looking. Anyway, if you're looking for a live sporting event that doesn't involve rackets and famous people, you might want to head out to the British International School's Nanxiang campus tomorrow:

From Jake Newby:

Following Shanghai Shenhua's 1-1 draw with Beijing Guo'an, fans take to the streets and burn a Guo'an mascot, sending plumes of toxic smoke into the air.

This week, we headed to the Olympic football stadium (the Shanghai indoor stadium, to be exact), just to have a look. We ended up buying tickets for the evening's football game: Norway vs. Japan (women's preliminaries). OK, so we hadn't really expected Beijing style mobs, but to get four tickets for less than 100 kuai each still felt a little too easy. Tickets for the rest of this week's matches were still available on Tuesday, even some for next weeks' women's semifinal. The men's semi final had sold out, but tickets for the bronze game were still available.

Olympic soccer (football) preliminary play started yesterday, with the Chinese women's team beating Sweden 2-1 on goals from Xu Yuan and Han Duan. The men's team plays New Zealand tonight in Shenyang, and Shanghai Stadium will host games next week, beginning with men's Group A matches on Sunday.

About a week after sacking men's national team coach Vladimir Petrovic and, more remarkably, three weeks before the Olympics, China removed its men's soccer (football) Olympic head coach Ratomir Dujkovic on Thursday. The Chinese Football Association (CFA) has replaced him with Yin Tiesheng, who led the men's under-20 national team in 2004 and has also coached the CFA's Qingdao team.

In previous years it was the most eagerly awaited fixture on the Chinese football calendar. Dalian and Shanghai Shenhua, the two pre-eminent footballing powers in the country, have 10 championship titles and seven runners-up honours between them in the 14-year history of the Chinese professional league. The fact that all the runners up spots, and only two of the ten titles belong to Shenhua, made it all the more poingant in their crushing 3-1 victory over Dalian at Hongkou Stadium on Saturday night.

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:

Direct from SmartShanghai's newly spruced up website comes this piece of bar news: "The British Bulldog ... has completed their renovations and is (soft) open for your drinking needs. Apparently these renovations were quite intense with a new second floor terrace, a new DJ booth, and sports relegated to their third floor with a private viewing room for you and your 'mates.'" SmSh also reports (in The Wire, which you can't link to directly for some reason?) that a big U.S. Independence Day party is planned. (The Brits celebrate it too you know: good riddance!) Perhaps we'll reserve judgment on why our favourite sports bar is trying to banish the footy upstairs until then. No answer on their "Dog and Bone", so if you head down to the Bulldog before July 4th, you do so at your own risk.

The Brits are trying to pretend it isn't happening, and the Americans didn't realise it was in the first place, but Euro2008 is now fully underway.

Listening to the ever-excellent Football Weekly podcast from Guardian Unlimited the other day, we stumbled across the story of the Tibetan "national" team playing against Padania this week in Milan. If you're thinking "how can Tibet have a national team?" or "what the hell is a Padania?" then you've clearly never heard of the Viva World Cup. Frankly, you probably wouldn't be the only one.

Shanghai Shenhua won their fourth home game on the trot at Hongkou stadium last night, comfortably sweeping aside Henan Jianye 2-0. (video highlights here)

The random group selections for the Men and Women‘s Olympic Football (AKA soccer) competition were made last night in a blaze of Beijing razzmatazz.

An absolute peach of a goal from young midfielder Shen Longyuan was the highlight of yet another entertaining win for Shanghai Shenhua at Hongkou Stadium last night.