2024-10-06 13:31:01
It was supposed to be another discipline in which China would rule the world. Despite large investments and the purchase of foreign stars, the local football team did not become a star. On the contrary, if Chinese football is being dealt with recently, it is because of corruption scandals.
Thursday, September 5, was marked by Chinese fans as a day of national humiliation. Two big things happened – after a two-year investigation, it became clear that the players and management of the 41 clubs involved influenced the results of 120 matches. A total of 44 people, including 38 players, were banned for life as a result and face charges of taking bribes, illegally opening a casino and gambling, which China has banned since the time of dictator Mao Zedong. Another seventeen people were charged with bribery and match fixing.
A few hours later, China faced Japan in a 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier and lost 0-7. It was the worst defeat since 2012, when the match ended in victory for Brazil 8-0.
It was not a big surprise, as Japan is one of the best teams in Asia and the sixteenth most successful team in the world overall. In contrast, China’s men’s national team is ranked 91st and has qualified for the World Cup only once since 1957, in 2002. That time they did not score once and were eliminated after three matches.
Nevertheless, the fans were hoping for a better result during the September match. The reason was a big political campaign, which promised that their national team would first be nominated, then host the world championship and finally win it. The promises to make China a football superpower by 2050 have probably failed.
“The hopes were high. That’s why the disappointment is so great,” Liu Tung-feng, a professor at the Shanghai University of Sports, told the New York Times last year.
The rapid rise and fall of Chinese football
The current president of China, Xi Jinping, came in 2011, that is, even before he came to power, with the aim of making the country a football powerhouse. He claims that football is one of his favorite sports. In the past, he even received a soccer jersey in the color of the country with his name on it from several world leaders.
Chinese President Xi Jinping received a football club jersey with his name in Brazil. Image from 2017 | Photo: Beto Barata / Zuma Press / Profimedia
His vision was caught by companies that started to invest heavily in football clubs. Tens of thousands of new playgrounds were to be built for billions, team sports were to be included in the school curriculum, and 50,000 football elementary schools were to be opened by 2025.
One such store was opened in Shanghai in 2016 by former Czech footballer Pavel Nedvěd, who also became the ambassador of the Chinese Super League after David Beckham. “It is a great honor for me and for the whole of the Czech Republic,” he said at the time, according to Reuters.
Chinese clubs bought foreign football stars for sums exceeding 50 million dollars (1.1 billion crowns) and in the 2015/2016 season alone they paid 451 million dollars (over 10 billion crowns) for transfers, making them among the top five spending leagues in the world , CNN writes.
However, already in 2018, investments began to fall, because every year the clubs spent many times more than they earned. Other problems came with the coronavirus pandemic and with the collapse of construction companies that often sponsored football clubs. Clubs began to close, the winner of the Chinese league, Jiangsu Suning, also ended. Foreign players began to leave the country – out of a hundred transfers, only three players remained in China. Some of them justified it by isolation during the coronavirus, others by non-payment of salaries. A few players have even filed complaints with the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA) against Chinese clubs for non-payment.
William Pi, a sports consultant based in Beijing, believes that the pandemic has only “worsened the entire financial scenario of the Chinese Super League, hastened its downfall and made it almost impossible to get revenue from sponsors and broadcasters”.
“Football cannot be strengthened by singing odes and telling stories. It requires skills, physical and tactical training. It cannot be achieved through politics,” Chinese commentator and journalist Zhang Feng wrote on social media, according to the AP agency.
Penalties for corruption
Therefore, after years of heavy investment and corruption, Chinese football is at the same unsatisfactory level as it was years ago. Just this year, the former vice-president of the football association was sentenced to eleven years in prison for taking bribes, and the director of the match department was sentenced to seven years behind bars. The former director of the association was even sentenced to life imprisonment in March.
The fight against corruption is also one of the main goals with which Xi Jinping entered the party and state leadership. Foreign Policy magazine reports that it is football that shows how it is failing.
But China is recording success in women’s representation, whose teams, on the other hand, are underfunded, CNN points out. They have been nominated for the World Championship eight times and the best place was second. They are ranked 18th in the FIFA world rankings.
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Spotlight Aktuálně.cz – Olga Lomová | Video: Team Spotlight