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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://www.economist.com/node/21541716
Why China fails at football
Little red card
The telling reasons why, at least in football, China is unlikely to rule the
world in the near future
Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition
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.
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Frog-hunters of the Western Ghats
The game
A path through time immemorial
How Luther went viral
The faith (and doubts) of our fathers
The servant problem
Why have servants?
Pirate, colonist, slave
A Riche history
»Little red card
Sun Tzu and the art of soft power
The one-shot society
Retail therapy
Brewed force
The wisdom of crowds
Portrait of the artist as an entrepreneur
Seven seconds of fire
Reprints
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Beijing
China
Sport
FIFA World Cup
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 ineptitude. 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.
In a country so proud of its global stature, football is a painful national
joke. Perhaps because Chinese fans love the sport madly and want desperately
for their nation to succeed at it, football is the common reference point
by which people understand and measure failure. When, in 2008, milk powder
from the Chinese company Sanlu was found to have been tainted with melamine,
causing a national scandal, the joke was: “Sanlu milk, the exclusive milk
of the Chinese national football team!”
Everyone is free to take aim, and publicly. When China was dispatched 2-0 by
Belgium in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing (pictured above), a presenter on
national CCTV said: “The Chinese football team decided to get out quickly,
so as not to affect the people’s mood while they watch the Olympics.”
Chinese fans chanted for the ouster of the head of China’s Football
Association, Xie Yalong. The authorities sacked Mr Xie shortly after the
games.
All this hints at something rather unique and powerful about the place of
football in Chinese society. It is, like all organised sport in China,
ultimately the domain of the government; so, according to the Communist
Party’s normal methods, senior football officials should be provided at
least some protection from scrutiny. In general the secretive state
machinery of sport is shielded from public inspection, as it manufactures
medal-winning Olympic athletes in dozens of disciplines. Chinese football,
though, is so flagrantly and undeniably terrible and corrupt that all
potshots are allowed: at officials, referees, owners and players—even,
implicitly, at the heart of the communist system itself.
Solving the riddle of why Chinese football is so awful becomes, then, a
subversive inquiry. It involves unravelling much of what might be wrong with
China and its politics. Every Chinese citizen who cares about football
participates in this subversion, each with some theory—blaming the schools,
the scarcity of pitches, the state’s emphasis on individual over team
sport, its ruthless treatment of athletes, the one-child policy, bribery and
the corrosive influence of gambling. Most lead back to the same conclusion:
the root cause is the system.
A recent crackdown on football corruption offers little solace; it simply
mirrors the pyrrhic campaigns against official corruption elsewhere in China
. A mid-level functionary in China’s state security apparatus puts it
candidly: “You know all those problems with society that you like to blame
on China’s political system? Well it really is like that with football.”
Three little wishes
China cherishes its many inventions, real and purported. It recently laid
official claim to creating Mongolian throat singing (much to Mongolia’s
consternation). With the blessing of the international football body FIFA,
China also claims the world’s earliest recorded mention of a sport similar
to football, during the Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC. A version of the
game cuju, or “kick ball”, involved a single, elevated net and two sides
of 12 men.
In later centuries a version of the sport prevailed that favoured individual
over team skill. China’s rulers took an interest; one Ming-era painting
depicts the Xuande Emperor watching his subjects kick the ball around at
court. However, by the time football was indigenously innovated in England
in the 19th century, cuju and its variants had all but disappeared.
Football was then introduced to modern China as a foreign invention—but the
young nationalists who would later lead the nation still took to it. In his
early 20s Mao Zedong played keeper at a teachers’ college in his native
Hunan Province. Deng Xiaoping spent precious francs to watch football at the
1924 Olympics in Paris, where he was studying. After he became one of China
’s most powerful leaders, Deng, still a football fanatic, paid a visit to
the national team, saying that he hoped they would become an excellent side
“as soon as possible”.
That was in 1952. Four years later, after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA
) football team lost to a Yugoslav youth team, Mao met the Yugoslav side and
(according to the PLA Daily) said, “We lost to you now and perhaps will
keep losing for 12 years. But it would be very good to win in the 13th year.
” By 1969 Chinese football was instead in a shambles, amid the chaos of the
Cultural Revolution.
This July, undeterred by the lack of progress in the intervening decades,
Vice-President Xi Jinping, China’s presumed next leader and also a football
fan, added his own “three wishes”: first, qualify for another World Cup;
second, host a World Cup; finally, win a World Cup. Wisely, Mr Xi did not
set any deadlines.
So whatever ails Chinese football, it is not a lack of passion from the
country’s leaders. If anything, the opposite may be the problem. China’s
Party-controlled, top-down approach to sport has yielded some magnificent
results in individual sports, helping China win more Olympic gold medals in
Beijing in 2008 than any other country. But this “Soviet model” has proven
catastrophically unsuitable for assembling a team of 11 football players,
much less a nation of them.
The first problem is the method of identifying young talent. The sport
system selects children with particular attributes, such as long limbs,
which could pay off in athletics, rowing, swimming, diving or gymnastics.
These youngsters are the genetic wheat. But football’s legends can emerge
from the seeming chaff of human physiques: think of stocky Diego Maradona,
perhaps the greatest ever player, or his Argentine successor, the tiny
genius Lionel Messi.
Then there is the matter of gold medals and opportunity costs. China pursues
gold by funnelling athletes into obscure individual sports that can reap
multiple medals in competitions. 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).
But the contradictions and weaknesses of Chinese capitalism have also played
a part in the country’s footballing ignominy. In the early 1990s, with
economic reforms taking hold, China slowly allowed some of its state-run
teams to act more like commercial ventures, eventually establishing a
professional league of clubs with corporate sponsorships, investments and
higher salaries. The pay for players was still quite low in comparison with
Europe, but big domestic stars began earning hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year, a fortune at the time. The “professional” football era
began in 1994, but as with any other organised activity in China, the state
retained control.
In the event, adding heaps of money to an unaccountable bureaucracy made
matters worse. State-owned enterprises, seeking glory on the pitch, lavished
government money on the teams they sponsored. Private corporate investors
followed suit, and cut-throat competition dramatically raised star-player
salaries. A similar pay spiral has afflicted other countries’ leagues, too;
but, in China, some clubs with less wealthy backers found distinctive and
creative ways to survive.
Investors would contrive to fix games as favours to the local officials who
nominally controlled the clubs (these types of matches are called “favour”
, “relationship” or “tacit” matches, and are not viewed negatively by
many within the game). Gambling syndicates, including the triads, began
exerting influence over investors, referees, coaches and players. A spoils
system evolved, and everyone took their cuts.
Blowing the golden whistle
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.
After China’s ignominious exit from the competition, things got worse.
Corporate sponsorships and investments declined, hitting salaries and making
players yet more susceptible to gambling syndicates. At the same time, with
the Chinese economy flourishing, the volume of betting rose dramatically.
Finally, in 2007, an investigation of match-fixing in Singapore followed a
trail back to Chinese ringleaders. Singapore’s authorities tipped off
police in north-eastern China, who uncovered match-fixing irregularities
there, ultimately forcing, in 2009-10, a second, more severe reckoning for
Chinese football. (Likewise, probes into financial crimes in Hong Kong have
occasionally ensnared mainland officials who might otherwise have escaped
punishment.) This time some 20 people, including a referee previously
considered the game’s most honest—and known as the “golden whistle” for
his incorruptibility—were caught in the crackdown.
As officials were detained, a parade of tearful confessions and
recriminations played out on national television. Huang Junjie, a referee
and one of those in tears, explained that he had once refused a bribe from a
club to fix a match only because a leading football association official
had already asked him to rig it. Mr Huang gave the public an idea of match-
rigging lingo as well: when an official texted him to provide “even-handed
justice”, it meant he should favour a visiting team over the home side.
Russia 11, China 0
Those caught gave damning justifications, candid in a way that officials in
other corruption scandals are typically not allowed to be. “In the general
environment of Chinese football at that time, it felt like if one doesn’t
do it, one loses out,” said Yang Xu in televised comments: “one just seems
like a fool.” An executive of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical FC, Mr Yang and his
club had agreed to pay 200,000 yuan to another club to throw a game in 2006
, so Guangzhou could get promoted to the Chinese Super League.
The rot of corruption went to the top: Nan Yong, then boss of the Chinese
Football Association. Mr Nan reportedly confessed that players could buy
spots on the national team for 100,000 yuan—though that was hardly a shock.
Officials have long pressured national coaches to select or field certain
players. In one recent stretch of about two years, more than 100 players
were named to the national squad, a suspiciously high number and roughly
double the usual figure. If even the most prized honours have become
sellable commodities or patronage gifts, can Chinese football hope to have
any heroes?
Mao’s long wait
Some rather unlikely candidates have stepped forward to be the saviours of
Chinese football: property developers. In the hierarchy of cartoon villains
in Chinese society, developers are among the most reviled, alongside the
corrupt officials some allegedly cut deals with to take people’s land.
But developers do have cash. The Evergrande Real Estate Group, which is
controlled by billionaire and Communist Party member Xu Jiayin, and which
acquired the disgraced Guangzhou Pharmaceutical club in 2010, is spending
money like Real Madrid. Evergrande pays generous salaries and victory
bonuses, reducing players’ incentives to fix matches, and is building a
huge football school. After 11 years away from the sport, Mr Wang of Wanda (
also a party member) has taken on a three-year, 195-million yuan sponsorship
of the Chinese Super League—reportedly with the encouragement of a member
of China’s Politburo, Liu Yandong.
These days the owners of 13 of the 16 clubs in the Chinese Super League are
either developers or have big property interests. Some have reportedly
received cheaper land from local administrations in exchange for their
support. Several intend to build more football pitches on it.
Will children come out to play, though? Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Chinese
children are not queuing up to be football stars. Perhaps above all other
factors, this is why hopes for the future of football are dim. From 1990 to
2000 there were more than 600,000 teenagers in China playing organised
football, according to official counts of registered players; from 2000 to
2005 that number dropped to an average of 180,000; today (with statistics
kept differently) Chinese football officials estimate the number of
teenagers playing some form of organised football to be little more than 100
,000.
Another grim indicator was the 11-0 embarrassment of a team from Beijing’s
Ditan Primary School at the nimble feet of some diminutive Russian children
from Irkutsk in Siberia. The Siberian youngsters won five of six friendly
matches in a late October visit to Beijing (drawing the sixth), prompting a
round of self-flagellation in the Chinese media and online postings
explaining how youth football had arrived at this sorry state.
However keen they are to watch the game, years of scandal and failure have
made parents sceptical about encouraging their children to play it. They
worry that the football world is dirty and will corrupt their offspring. In
any case, most don’t want their children—especially only children—to
waste their time on sport. The education system is geared toward
standardised tests, requiring hours of after-school work, which are
considered by many to be the lone path to upward mobility.
When children do seek a diversion in sport, many find it on the basketball
court. America’s NBA, with the help of Yao Ming, one of its stars until his
recent retirement, has been marketed much more aggressively in China than
have the European football leagues. Basketball also requires a much smaller
patch of dirt to play on, and land is a scarce commodity (and so hugely
profitable). The few pitches that are being set aside by developers will
help, but thousands more are needed.
Still, if the resilient fans are any indication, hope is not entirely lost.
Millions watch the Chinese Super League’s matches on television, which
often draw better ratings than basketball in the regions where they are
broadcast (reportedly embarrassed by the fecklessness in football, national
CCTV stopped airing league games in 2008). Tens of thousands fill big-city
stadiums to see their countrymen play badly.
Today’s game is described by insiders as cleaner than it has been since the
professional era began—the logical but perhaps fleeting dividend of any
high-profile corruption crackdown. There are still fans in the stands
chanting “hei shao” or “black whistle”, and sometimes, as in the case of
the chip shot in the botched Qingdao fix, “da jiaqiu” (“playing fake
ball”). Connections and relationships continue to rule.
Evergrande’s South Korean manager Lee Jang-soo, the longest-serving foreign
coach in Chinese football, says that Chinese players don’t put in the same
effort as footballers in the world’s leading leagues: “Perhaps all they
think of is to establish good relationships with their superiors,” he said.
“Most clubs are like this. It’s mainly about connections, not hard work.
” The best players at Evergrande, the nation’s top club, are mostly
foreigners earning millions of dollars a year.
After, arguably, more than 2,000 years, China still awaits its first home-
grown football star. Spectacularly able though it is to overcome its
problems in other kinds of competition, in football, at least, China’s wait
for glory looks set to be a long one. | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 2 The Buddha tells the people he can fulfil only one of their wishes. Someone
asks: “Could you lower the price of property in China so that people can
afford it?” Seeing the Buddha frown in silence, the person makes another
wish: “Could you make the Chinese football team qualify for a World Cup?”
After a long sigh, the Buddha says: “Let’s talk about property prices.” | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 3 “Sanlu milk, the exclusive milk of the Chinese national football team!” |
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