Why China sucks at soccer, and will continue to suck

[RandomGuy]

Oddly enough from the Economist (mind you they are British, football=soccer here), a tale of corruption and bungling:

THE pass back to the goalkeeper seemed routine for Qingdao Hailifeng FC in its match against Sichuan FC in September 2009, even if the ball was struck a little too hard and the keeper only just managed to stop it running past him and into the net. Qingdao was safely ahead 3-0 with two minutes left in a meaningless match in China’s second division. What could be amiss?

Then a Qingdao assistant coach gestured for the keeper to come forward from the penalty area. Another Qingdao player promptly chipped the ball over him and towards the net, missing an own goal by inches. The final whistle blew soon afterwards.

Qingdao’s owner Du Yunqi was irate—at his team’s utter incompetence. As he would later admit to investigators, he had just lost a bet that there would be a total of four goals scored in the game. His humiliated assistant coach said on national television, “Afterward the boss was angry and scolded me, saying I bungled things and couldn’t even fix a match.”

The hapless case of “chip-shot gate”, as the Qingdao game came to be known, is just one low point in aeons of Chinese footballing inep ude. The only time China qualified for the World Cup finals, in 2002, its side failed to score in any of its three matches; the team has never won a game at the Olympics. And Chinese players are sometimes too incompetent not only to win matches, but also to rig them.

...


By the end of the 1990s, it was clear to some insiders that few people in football cared about the quality or integrity of the game. One of the pioneer investors, Wang Jianlin of the Dalian Wanda Group, a property conglomerate, gave up his company’s sponsorship of the team in the north-eastern city of Dalian in 1999-2000—explaining years later that he did so in part because of the sport’s infiltration by gambling interests. Geely, a carmaker, withdrew its support of a club in the southern city of Guangzhou in 2001, just eight months after agreeing to invest. “I was shocked,” Geely’s chief, Li Shufu, told the media. “For a match, bribes of one million, two million yuan [$120,000-240,000] were offered, and not a single football official or referee ever got caught.”

Almost no one got caught because, in proper Communist fashion, an organisation that was deeply involved in fixing matches, the Chinese Football Association, was the same authority charged, in 2001, with investigating and punishing misconduct. A whitewash was the outcome, not coincidentally just months before China’s first World Cup finals in 2002.

http://www.economist.com/node/21541716


FWIW. I hope they get it sorted out, but I doubt the current government has the will or capability to do so. One of the interesting thing mentioned was the focus on Olympic medals, and how that hinders the development of soccer.

China pursues gold by funnelling athletes into obscure individual sports that can reap multiple medals in compe ions. Football can only yield one medal or World Cup (two, counting the women: Chinese women have fared much better against a less-developed international field).

[lefty]

Yeah but they have Kung-Fu !