Chinese National Football Team
We will present you the football status of China, whose
football
team has dramatically underperformed relative
to its population
size and economic power.
Players Hired by Top Football Club
Present Chinese Football : Tension and Confusion
With the failure to qualify for the 2022 QATAR World Cup finals, national's confidence in Chinese
football drops to the lowest point. Many Chinese Super League teams announced their
withdrawal from the new season of the Chinese Super League,even last year's champion team
announced its disbandment less than three months after winning the championship.
Compared to China's Asian Neighbors, Korean and Japanese football has been creating miracles,
but Chinese football has always been making farce.China has only one player in the top five European
leagues, while South Korea and Japan have many high-level players andhave the strength
to play against world-class teams. Recently, Son Heung-min won the Golden Boot with 0 penalties,
creating Asian history. He became the first Asian to win the Golden Boot in the top five European
leagues.
Most people just want to see the results, but few are dedicated to the process
of Chinese football. There are too many people watching dramas, but too few serious people.
2022-Oman
30.03.2022, Chinese national team lost 0-2 away to Oman, marking the failure to qualify for Qatar World Cup
2021-China
27.02.2021, Jiangsu team, who just won the Chinese Super League, announced the disbandment
2022 - Spain
Wu Lei, the only Chinese player in the five major leagues, is still fighting for a starting chance
2022-England
23.05.2022, South Korean star Son Heung-min becomes the first Asian to win the Premier League Golden Boot
Iron Rose vs Always Lose
The exploits of China’s national women’s football team, the ‘Iron Roses’, who were FIFA Women’s World Cup runners-up in 1999 and perennial Asian champions in the 1990s, further raised expectations.The Chinese women's national football team staged an "epic reversal" in the 2022 Women's Asian Cup final. After falling behind by two goals, they scored three goals in a row. With a stoppage-time goal, they defeated South Korea and won the Asian championship again after 16 years. Instead, China’s men’s team has struggled, and been comfortably outperformed by its similarly late-developing East Asian neighbours South Korea and Japan, for the past two decades.5 China’s only qualification for the men’s FIFA World Cup finals tournament came in 2002, but it lost all three games. Since then it has lurched between brief flickers of promise and abject failure, including humiliating defeats to Thailand and United States Major League Soccer (MLS) club Real Salt Lake, and even dropping out of the top 100 of the FIFA World Rankings in 2013. As of August 2017 it languishes in 77th place, sandwiched between Sierra Leone and Qatar. Chinese men's football team once again lost its qualification for the 2022 World Cup without any accident.
Possible Reason
In ‘Bamboo Goalposts’, Rowan Simons’ examination of contemporary Chinese football, Simons argues that China’s failure in football results from the lack of grassroots-level participation that sustains traditional football nations. Despite its vast population, very few Chinese citizens actually play football. The absence of the informal football activity is partly due to lack of places to play. Even by 1998, Beijing had only 30 football pitches for its 12 million inhabitants, mostly owned by universities. Amateur football has also been suppressed by laws requiring state approval for gatherings of 10 or more people. However, rather than encouraging all of its citizens to kick a ball about for fun, developing public football facilities, and generally stimulating wider interest and involvement in the game, the Chinese government has focused on achieving international success as quickly as possible. To do this it has applied the top-down sports development model implemented successfully for Olympic sports, devoting its resources to identifying and hothousing elite talent at a very young age. Coaching has often been outsourced to foreign coaches hired from whichever nations were successful in world football at that time, as opposed to the more sustainable model of China developing its own coaches. Furthermore, after an encouraging start to the professional era, even China’s domestic football has offered little to inspire would-be young footballers to take up the game. Despite a 2004 rebranding and reformation of the Jia-A League to become the Chinese Super League, the competition was increasingly beset by corruption involving gambling and match-fixing.
History
Ancient: Cuju
Cuju, which literally means “kick ball”, was a ball game that largely eschewed ball handling in favour of kicking, and featured opposing teams and goals. Cuju was popularised in the Han dynasty from 200BC as a form of military training, and remained part of Chinese culture for the next 1800 years. Popularity peaked in the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), with the establishment of cuju leagues, professional players and a transfer market.
1900 - 1950: Start
Modern football spread to mainland China in the late 19th century via foreign workers and Christian missionaries, By 1907 English expatriates in Shanghai had created a league.Native adoption led to a Chinese football association and national team, formed in 1924 and affiliated to FIFA in 1931.
National football team enters Berlin Olympics
China achieved a measure of international success from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s, including Olympic qualificationin 1936 and 1948.But the nation’s football development was severely hampered by the Second War.
1950 - 1980: Stagnant
FIFA formerly recognised the PRC in 1958, but the following year China withdrew from international competition.China’s involvement in international football from 1959 to 1980 consisted mainly of friendlies with sympathetic political regimes.
1954,Joseph, the first foreign coach of Chinese football
China’s involvement in international competition was limited during this period. It was not until 1982 that the nation once again took part in World Cup qualifiers.
1980 - 2000: Restart
Factory clubs were allowed to join from the early 1980s, bringing greater competition and funds, but a fully professional national competition, the Jia-A League, did not begin until 1994. Chinese domestic football mirrored the national economy in transitioning rapidly from almost complete state-sponsorship and central planning to a more diverse market-oriented system, with commercially-sponsored teams, transfer fees, and even a handful of overseas players.Football’s increasing commercialisation and hegemonic status amongst world sports throughout the 1990s and 2000s had coincided with China’s extraordinary economic development.
1994, first Jia-A League kicks off in Chendu
2000 - 2010: Fall
In 2002, the Chinese team entered the World Cup finals for the first time, which greatly inspired the people of the whole country. However, in the following 20 years, Chinese football has gradually entered a desperate predicament.
2002, China first enter World Cup Final
From the failure to qualify for the 2006 and 2010 World Cup finals to widespread corruption within domestic football, compared to China’s booming economy and successful hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games, football’s failures gradually became a national embarrassment.
2010 - now: Dilemma
In 2015 the Chinese government set out a blueprint for developing the sport, including the intent to bid for the World Cup. As a result, football has been widely introduced as part of the school curriculum. China’s domestic football league has also received rapid and substantial investment, both from government and private enterprises. Guangzhou FC won the AFC Champions League twice in 2013 and 2015, which once gave us hope.
2015, Guangzhou FC won the AFC Champions League twice in three years
With the failure to qualify for the 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, the rise of previously weak teams in Southeast Asia and the constant stagnant, national's confidence in Chinese football drops to the lowest point.
Where is future?
Despite repeated disappointments, every Chinese football fan will cheer for the national football team in every game. We still hope that one day we can see China advance to the World Cup finals again, and we still hope that one day, we can build our own football culture. Not so eager for quick success, but really enjoying the sport. Still hope that one day, we can see the appearance of Chinese football rejuvenated.
WE ALWAYS BELIEVE