Like a drama unfolding in a riveting suspense novel, the quadrennial global football gala is becoming more and more compelling as the climax approaches. Billions of people are glued to the tube watching the World Cup in Germany, and Chinese football fans are following the countdown with the rest of the world. According to a poll by China Central Television, the national broadcaster, World Cup games have attracted combined viewers of at least 10 billion.
For Chinese football enthusiasts, however, the joy of watching a good game cannot offset a deep pain in their hearts. China"s national squad isn’t there.
Since the debut performance of the Chinese team in World Cup finals in 2002, fans have waited 1,441 days to see another World Cup. But this time, the Chinese team lagged behind again. Nobody knows how many years it will be before the Chinese team returns to the final stage of the World Cup.
The moment a World Cup draws its curtain is the usual time for observers to make a painful review of the past and draw up a plan to save China’s football in the future.
In recent decades, the Chinese people have shouldered a heavy regret over their national football team: It hasn’t made it to World Cup finals. Some comment in a satirical tone that in a country of 1.3 billion people, we could afford to choose one player from every 100 million and still have a super team with two back-up players. As the Chinese football team lags further behind foreign counterparts at large and Asian teams in particular, Chinese athletes are making breakthroughs in events they were never before good at, such as Yao Ming in basketball and Olympic gold medallist Liu Xiang in the 110-meter hurdles.
The Chinese people have never stopped seeking a magical power to undo the curse on their football team. In the last two decades, the Chinese team took the top squads of Brazil, England and Germany as role models one by one. But the result is that they haven’t learned even the most basic of things, and the Chinese squad has never been more confused.
Chinese football officials once thought that a great leap forward involves sending footballers to be trained abroad and hiring foreign coaches. However, without mastering the development of football as a sport or the ability to combine advanced theories with real Chinese situations, they have never come up with a set of comprehensive and consistent strategies. Even though the Chinese team was generous enough to pay hefty salaries to foreign coaches, they failed to absorb the essence of what was being taught.
The unprecedented coup of leading the Chinese team into World Cup finals in 2002 made the charismatic Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic a household name overnight. Yet with the end of the Milutinovic era, Chinese football was left at the starting point once again.
Upgrading the domestic leagues was agreed upon as a recipe to bail Chinese football out of the abyss. And its effect has been recognized. What has backfired is that football players are losing their interest or motivation to refine their skills after reaping fortunes from playing professionally.
The starting point of any development of a sport is to nurture players’ essential qualities of competitiveness and sportsmanship, whether they are out of passion for the sport, professional ethics or national pride. Without such qualities, a team will be no more than a team doomed to defeat.