ONE of the most dismal days in the history of Chinese national football was June 15th 2013, President Xi Jinping’s 60th birthday. Having lost to Uzbekistan and Holland in friendly matches earlier that month, China were thrashed 5-1 at home by a Thai youth team. Furious Chinese fans swarmed around China’s Spanish coach, José Antonio Camacho and smashed cars. Mr Camacho resigned.
Men’s football in China is a national shame. In FIFA’s world rankings China’s male players rank 88th; below Estonia, a country whose 1.3m people could fit with room to spare inside a Beijing suburb. China qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, but failed to score. Its domestic league is blackened by tales of match-fixing and bribery. Investment in expensive foreign coaches has not been much help.
Mr Xi wants to change this. He has been a football fan since childhood, when he played for his school team. During his early career he attended weekend matches. He was in the crowd at a Shanghai stadium in 1983 when China lost 5-1 to Watford, a British club. (The People’s Daily, a party-run newspaper, says Mr Xi...Continue reading
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