Chinese in many places the first, and in football often between the last

With 1.4 billion inhabitants, outstanding economic development and endless reading of sports medals, it is necessary to ask what bush the rabbit is that China is not on a football map.

After the last match at the Asian World Cup qualifiers, ending with the defeat against Australia, China is firmly appreciated to the bottom of the third group, consisting of Bahrain, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Japan. After eight games played, he has only six points, and it seems that the national team will release the future mundial. Previously, they only made it to the biggest football competition once, in 2002, when after three defeats in three games, they had eliminated in the group work.

(Too) a small pool of players

The state has a problem with the staff, as the pool of registered players is very small or too small compared to the entire population. In 2022, China had only 710,000 players registered. By comparison, Slovenia – which has almost seven hundred times less – had last year, according to NHS president Radenka Mijatovic More than 74,000 registered players, the highest.

It does not help to develop that the largest Asian country has only four national football leagues, with most other countries at least five or six leagues, which can serve as a development path for players who may once be able to play for the national team. The first professional league was founded in China only in the 1990s, creating a handful of big clubs from the largest cities, but that was not enough to accept football as an important sport throughout the country.

Bribes as an integral part of the game

With all the problems caused by the lack of players, the Chinese football world is imbued with corruption.

In August last year, Vice President of the Chinese Football Federation was sentenced to eleven years in prison for receiving bribes, and for the same reasons he received seven years in prison the former head of the competition. Former Chinese Chinese Football Association also received his sentence before Chen xyuanwho put a total of ten million euros in bribes during his presidency.

Likewise, in September last year, the Chinese Football Federation condemned 38 players and five club employees for a lifetime ban on participation in the football world, and seventeen received a short, five -year sentence.

For a good measure, corruption problems are also among those who are supposed to be properly and fair. In December last year, a former football judge was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for receiving bribes Tan haithe then head of the state refereeing department. Something rotten should be in a country where someone has been closed due to corruption who has received the award for the best division of the first national football league four times between 2011 and 2015.

Foreign help

The proverb says that in Brazil, at the birth of a baby, they first determine which leg to play football. This mentality and the ubiquity of sports in national culture eventually gives birth to the legends and role models that young people want to follow. China has no of this, at least in football. He was promising Li tiewho appeared for Everton in the Premier League and was later a coach of the Chinese national team, but also a 20 -year prison sentence for corruption.

The biggest project, which promised with the emergence of a new generation of football fans, took place in 2016, when Chinese first -team players from European clubs brought the football players’ plays – they moved to Asia at the time Jackson Martínez, Hulk, Axis and Carlos Tevez. Wasting in the end did not produce the desired results, and most players soon returned to countries where football was more than just an investment.

Because home coaches did not work, the Chinese football association turned to foreigners. Thus, the national team was led by the legendary Italian Marcelo Lippi and Fabio Cannavarothen the Serb followed Aleksandar Jankovicbut when that did not bring the fruit desired, they put a Croat on the forefront Branko Ivankovic. The latter, too, has not been celebrated with fame so far.

The lack of a natural football base cannot be replaced with football players from other parts of the world, which is currently being found in the Arab Peninsula. While investigations that suppress corruption and investments in foreign force are better than nothing, China will have to do many more to make the superpower in one of the few areas where it is not yet.