China has a new lucky charm - a 12-year-old Aussie ballboy who helped them to victory in the Asian Cup. In this NEW footage, keeper Wang Dalei shows Stephan White his gratitude.
Hi, I'm a Chinese soccer player and I even suck at sucking. Source: Getty Images
China is the world's most populous nation, will soon be the world's largest economy, and is powerful in all sorts of ways most of us can only imagine.
But there's one major global arena in which China completely and utterly sucks. Sure, we could use a grown-up phrase like "fails to pull its weight" or something similar, but let's say it like it really is.
We're talking about soccer, and China sucks at it. In fact, it suckety-sucks. And boy, does that hurt Chinese pride.
China's fortunate win over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup on Saturday night was a step in the right direction. And don't forget that old Chinese proverb from 6th century BC philosopher Lao-Tzu that says "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".
The problem for Chinese football is that it's had that first step plenty of times before. It's the next and step, and the ones after it, that are the problem.
Enjoy it while it lasts, fellas. Cos it probably won't. Picture: Patrick Hamilton / AFP Source: AFP
Every time Chinese football looks like it's going somewhere, it ends up going nowhere. China has made the final of the Asian Cup twice, losing to Saudi Arabia in 1984 and to Japan in 2004. But its cabinet remains devoid of major trophies.
China has made a World Cup just once, in 2002, when it enjoyed a saloon passage through to the finals because co-hosts Japan and South Korea both had automatic entry and weren't there in qualifying.
Like the 1974 Socceroos, China didn't score a goal at its first World Cup. And it could be decades before it does.
The question is why. Why, when the Chinese Super League is strong enough to produce last year's Asian Champions League winners Guangzhou Evergrande FC, does the sport struggle so badly?
One problem, according to The Australian's senior football journalist Ray Gatt, is corruption.
"There has always been a lot of corruption and match fixing in the Chinese league, and that holds them back. It stops the development of good players," Gatt says.
Freelance Asian football reporter Alan Mtashar, who writes for SBS and ESPN, says a clash of cultures is another problem.
"They haven't really developed a lot of players or stuck with coaches that understand the Chinese," Mtashar says. "They've had Spanish coaches and now there's this French guy. I feel like there's a disconnect. They've got some decent players, a strong league and cash resources. But they're not producing on the field."
China has had its greatest success on the global sporting stage in sports where it can hand-pick children from infancy and funnel them into Olympic sports which are short on prestige but long on medals.
Unlike in ping pong, China has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to football. Picture: Warren Little / Getty Images Source: Getty Images
But that approach doesn't work in football, where no single body type is perfect. For example, look how often Tim Cahill soars above his opposition to score a goal from headers. Yet he's only 178cm (5 foot 10).
The salvation for Chinese football may lie in a new program developed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, a self-confessed football nut. The President is introducing soccer in schools as a compulsory part of the national curriculum, and aims to have some 20,000 schools with new soccer fields by 2017.
You can't pluck some 5-year-old from a rice paddy in Yunnan province and expect them to do this. It just doesn't work that way in football. Picture: Patrick Hamilton / AFP Source: AFP
Property developers could also be unlikely saviours. A recent report in The Economist said that most of the owners of the 16 clubs in the Chinese Super League are either developers or have substantial property interests, and that some are receiving cheaper land from local administrations in exchange for integrating football pitches into their developments.
If China is serious about growing the game from the ground up, then success will likely follow given its enormous population base, and the team will slowly rise from its current FIFA ranking of 96. But that could take a generation.
In the meantime, sports stores in Beijing and Shanghai will likely continue selling more of the red shirts of Liverpool and Manchester United than the red shirts of the national men's squad.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
The big thing China totally sucks at
Dengan url
http://gosipesbuk.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-big-thing-china-totally-sucks-at.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
The big thing China totally sucks at
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
The big thing China totally sucks at
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar