[China Now] Disappointment grows among Chinese football fans

This article was compiled from the story of Li Yang, reporter of the China Daily, about people’s growing disappointment of Chinese fooball. His story was carried on the Peoples’ Daily Online on April 01, 2012. 

Chinese people have started to have essimistic attitude toward the Chinese football lately. They think that Chinese Super League spend too much money on buying foreign players instead of cultivating young players through training, according to Li. 

Fanatical Chinese football fans appeared in competition ground, dressing in team uniforms. (photo: www.baidu.com)

In the story, he spoke out what the Chinese football fans have long wanted to say. “Importing famous foreign players paying high prices is not the cure-all for ailing Chinese football,” he argued. Many Chinese people seem to have shared the idea. That’s why his opinion is gaining support from a large number of  football fans.

Li further exposed that the 16 clubs in the top Chinese football league spent about 3 billion yuan(＄476million)  for bringing in foreign players in recent years, including the famous French star-player Nicolas Anelka, but the future is not so optimistic.
 
“Surely no one expect that the Chinese Super League would develop despite such huge amount of investment unless the rampant corruptions in connection with soccer are rooted out,” he went on to say.

He also said the Chinese Super League caught world attention not because of the high quality of its games, but because of their huge spending.

Accordingly, many famous foreign players have come to China in pursuit of  money. However, few of them stayed in China more than half a year. 

On the other hand, China is faced with serious shortage of professional football players. According to relevant statistics, “China has only 8,000 registered players compared to 50,000 in Vietnam, 600,000 in Japan and 1.46 million in France”.

Foreign football player shares happiness of goal with Chinese players. (photo: www.news.cn)

He suggested that CEOs of  the Super League teams should learn from Japanese mode of operation.
Japanese clubs started buying foreign players in early 1990s, but they also began to establish training schools to cultivate young players at the same time.

Meanwhile, he also criticized that  Most Chinese clubs did not start training young players until two years ago, when the football authority made it a compulsory requirement for clubs. And, although the Chinese football authority has started programs for promoting football in schools, not enough money has been  invested, he said.