Posted on 12/30/2011 9:37:54 AM PST by Seizethecarp
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!”
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
The irony is that while soccer is the ‘world’s game’, the two most populous countries, China and India, suck at it.
Especially the case of India, which was a British colony, is particularly perplexing, funny how such a poor country is more into Cricket, which is considered a more upper-class sport than soccer.
well, india made Cricket a popular sport, playing it on the streets etc. And now it IS the global center of cricket. They used to be reasonably ok at football in the 50s, but cricket then took center stage.
Soccer may be played in every country, but it is really the sport of two continents - Europe and South America.
Also cricket is cheaper and more flexible than soccer - it is easier to make your own durable cricket bat, ball and wicket than to make your own inflatable, game-quality soccer ball, and any field of any shape can be a cricket pitch.
Hah...funny...I was just watching "Master and Commander", and thought it was interesting the crew was playing cricket in the middle of rocks and cactus while on the Galapagos Islands, but didn't seem to diminish their enjoyment any...
-- Just a random thought from a proud, jingoist, red-blooded American who couldn't [sic] care less about the so-called world's game.
Actually the Chinese womens' team is one of the best in the world. And India was not much good at cricket, a few decades ago, but now they are world champions at one day matches.
Using their feet a lot, are they? Go read some history and learn something.
Oh, so a globalist chimes into the thread. Are you one of those types that spells "color" with a 'u'?
China performs well at amateur sports because its sports machine provides a full-time job (until retirement) for large numbers of athletes in those sports, whereas outside of China, amateur athletes in those sports are usually part-timers and have to scrounge for commercial sponsorships. In professional sports, China usually ends up well below the top tier, because its pro athletes are no longer competing against foreign amateurs, and simply do not have the genetic attributes to prevail against foreign professionals - the Mongoloid build, on average, is fine-boned, slower and weaker.
There are plenty of good japanese and korean players in the european top leagues.
And beeing small and fine-boned is no hinderance in soccer as you can see with Maradonna, Garrincha, Romario etc
Messi the three time balon d’or winner is only 5’5’’ tall
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