【经济学家 11/12/17】足球 － 中国的耻辱和悲剧
【中文标题】足球 － 中国的耻辱和悲剧
【原文标题】Little red card Why China fails at football
【登载媒体】经济学家
【原文链接】http://www.economist.com/node/21541716
很明显的原因说明，中国至少在足球方面，还无法在可预见的未来统治世界。
佛祖对人们说，他可以实现一个愿望。有人说：“你能让中国的房子降价，人们都买得起吗？”佛祖皱眉沉思。于是那个人又问：“那你能让中国足球队打进世界杯决赛圈吗？”佛祖长叹一声，说：“还是让我想想房价的问题吧。”
2009年9月青岛海利丰俱乐部对四川的一场比赛中，青岛队员似乎热衷于把球回传给自家守门员，尽管有的传球力度过大，守门员要尽力扑救才能阻止球滚入身后的大门。青岛已经三球领先对方，离终场结束还有两分钟。到底是哪里出了问题？
青岛队一名助理教练做手势让守门员站到禁区线上，另一名青岛球员一个大脚把球吊过守门员头顶，飞向大门，只差几英寸没有入网。之后，比赛结束的哨声吹响了。
青岛队的老板杜允琪对球队的无能非常恼火。他在后来对调查人员交代，他在赛前押注这场比赛至少会进4个球。被他羞辱的助理教练在接受国家电视台采访时说：“赛后老板非常生气，训斥我的无能，连一场比赛都搞不定。”
青岛队倒霉的“吊射门”事件，仅仅是中国足球永世无法翻身的现实的一个小小缩影。中国唯一一次跻身世界杯决赛圈是在2002年，三场比赛中一球未进。这支队伍也从未赢得过一场奥运会足球比赛。中国的足球运动员有时候实在无能，不但无法赢得比赛，而且连操纵比赛都不会。
在一个对国际形象极为自豪的国家，足球是一个令全国痛苦不堪的笑柄。或许是因为中国的球迷疯狂地喜爱这项运动，迫切希望他们的国家可以获得成功，足球成为了公众理解、衡量失败的标准参照物。2008年，中国公司三鹿生产的奶粉因含有三聚氰胺而爆出全国丑闻，当时出现了这样的笑话：“三鹿牛奶，中国国家足球队唯一指定奶制品！”
所有人都可以随意、公开取笑中国足球。2008年北京奥运会足球赛中，当中国被比利时2比0领先时（上图），中央电视台的解说员说：“中国足球队决定尽早离开赛场，以免影响人们观看奥运会的心情。”中国球迷在赛场上高喊中国足协主席谢亚龙下课。比赛之后，谢先生迅速被官方解职。
所有这些都反映出足球在中国社会中独特而又强大的地位。就像其它有组织的运动项目一样，它也最终受政府的掌控。因此，依照共产党惯常的行为方式，足球高层官员至少可以免受部分监察。通常，国家体育机构内部的秘密运作都不受公众监督，只要它能培养出众多奥运会金牌获得者。然而，中国足球实在过于恶名昭彰、丑不堪言、腐败堕落，所以任何形式的攻击都是允许的——对官员、裁判、俱乐部老板、球员，甚至影射共产主义体制的核心。
于是，解开中国足球状况如此糟糕的谜团需要打破常规，其中会涉及到揭示中国和其政治体制存在的很多问题。每一个关心足球的中国公民都参与到这场颠覆性的讨论中，每个人都有自己的理论——学校的问题、缺少场地、国家更重视个人比赛项目而不是集体运动、运动员恶劣的生存环境、独生子女政策、贿赂，以及赌博的恶习。大部分现象都指向同样的结论：问题的根源在于体制。
近期对足球行业腐败的击中打压并未有效地安抚民众的情绪，这只不过反映了中国无处不在的对腐败官员代价高昂的打击行动。中国公安部门的一位中层官员曾经坦率地说：“你知道那些根源于中国政治体制的社会问题吗？足球的问题与此一模一样。”
三个愿望
中国对自己的很多发明都异常推崇，不论是现实中的还是传说中的。最近，官方把蒙古喉音唱法列为中国原产的艺术形式（蒙古人大吃一惊）。在国际足联的默许下，中国还声称世界上最早记录与足球类似的体育运动起源于公元前2世纪的汉朝，这个名为“蹴鞠”的游戏中包括一个架高的网子和分为两队的12个游戏者。
后来若干个世纪里，又出现了另一种更加强调个人而不是团队的类似运动。中国统治者对此发生了兴趣：一幅明代的画作描绘出，宣德皇帝观看臣子在庭院里踢球。然而，到了19世纪，现代足球运动在英国本土出现的时候，蹴鞠及其变种基本上都消失了。
后来，足球作为一种外国发明被引入现代中国，但是那些后来成为国家领导人的年轻爱国主义者都愿意接受这项运动。20多岁的毛泽东在湖南师范学院中曾经担任过守门员；邓小平在巴黎学习时，曾经花费宝贵的法郎去观看1924年奥运会的足球比赛。邓成为中国一位强大的领导人之后，依然是个球迷。他在1952年曾经探访国家足球队，说希望他们“尽快”成长为一支强大的队伍。
4年之后的一场比赛中，解放军队输给了来访的南斯拉夫青年队。毛会见了南斯拉夫队员（据《解放日报》的报道）说：“我们现在输给你们，或许未来12年还会继续输给你们。但是我希望在第13年我们能够赢得比赛。”但是到了1969年，中国足球在文化大革命的混乱中遭到了毁灭性的破坏。
国家副主席、被认为中国下一届领导人的习近平也是个足球爱好者，他并没有对中国足球几十年来原地踏步的现状感到灰心。他在7月份宣布了自己的“三个愿望”：第一，再一次进军世界杯；第二，主办一届世界杯；第三，夺取一次世界杯。习先生明智地没有定下时间表。
无论中国足球有多么糟糕，它至少不缺少国家领导人的热情。但是，这种热情恰恰也会成为问题所在。中国党领导、自上而下的体育制度在个人比赛项目中创造了辉煌的成绩，帮助中国在2008年北京奥运会上夺得金牌榜首的位置。但是这种“苏联”模式在组建11人的足球队时，却彻底无用武之地，更别说让一个国家的人团结起来了。
第一个问题是如何识别孩子的天赋。中国的体育制度根据体格特长来筛选儿童，比如四肢修长的孩子可能会在田径、划船、游泳、跳水或者体操方面存在潜力。这些孩子的确具有天生的优势。但是足球界的传奇人士似乎都有悖于人类传统的体格标准，想想又矮又壮的迭戈•马拉多纳，这位历史上最伟大的球员。还有他的阿根廷后起之秀，瘦弱的莱昂纳尔•梅西。
第二个问题是金牌的数量和机会成本。中国把无数的运动员倾注在各类单项比赛中，这样可以收获更多的金牌。而足球只能产生一枚金牌和一座世界杯奖杯（如果算上女足是两个，中国女足在这个尚欠发展的运动领域做得相当不错。）
中国资本社会的脆弱和矛盾之处也给这个国家的耻辱运动项目雪上加霜。在90年初，随着经济改革的发展，中国逐渐允许一些国家运作的足球队采取一些商业化的模式，最终成立了有专门赞助商、投资渠道和高额薪资的职业俱乐部联盟。虽然与欧洲比较起来，中国足球运动员的收入依然偏低，但是顶级球星每年可以有数十万美元的收入，在当时这是一笔巨款。“职业”足球时代开始于1994年，但就像中国其它任何有组织的活动一样，政府依然在幕后把控。
而且，把大笔钱投入不负责任的官僚机构让问题变得更加严重。那些希望在球场上有所斩获的国有企业，在他们赞助的球队身上投入巨额的政府资金。私人企业也纷纷效仿，恶性竞争让明星球员的薪资水涨船高。其它国家的联赛也曾经受到过哄抬球员薪水的困扰，但是在中国，一些不那么有钱的俱乐部找到了其独特、创新的生存方式。
投资方为了讨好名义上控制俱乐部的地方官员，会想办法左右比赛结果（这些比赛叫做“人情球”、“关系球”、“默契球”，在局内人看来，这都不算什么问题）。一些赌博集团，包括三合会，开始对投资方、裁判、教练和球员施加影响力。在这种分赃制度下，每个人各取所需。
金哨
到了90年代末，圈内人都知道，足球界已经没有人在乎比赛的质量和诚信。房地产集团大连万达的总经理王健林是企业赞助领域的先行者，他在1999年到2000年赛季停止赞助东北部城市大连的球队，部分原因是这项运动已经完全被赌博利益集团所侵蚀了。汽车制造商吉利在2001年停止赞助南部城市广州的球队，距其开始赞助还不到8个月。吉利的总经理李书福对媒体说：“太让我震惊了。一场比赛中的贿赂金达到100万到200万人民币（12万美元到24万美元），却没有一个足球官员或者裁判被抓到。”
这是因为，依照共产党惯例，深陷操纵比赛泥潭的组织——中国足协——也是在2001年负责调查和处罚违规行为的机构。调查的结果变成了和稀泥的过程，这就发生在2002年中国在世界杯决赛圈首次亮相的几个月之前。
中国队被屈辱地赶回家之后，情况更加恶化了。由于赞助方和投资方的撤退，待遇受到影响的球员更愿意接受赌博集团的操纵。与此同时，中国经济的蓬勃发展让赌金急剧上升。
最终，2007年新加波对一场操纵比赛的调查追溯到中国的犯罪头目。新加坡当局提醒已经发现比赛作假行为的中国东北部警方，2009到2010赛季中发生的问题会对中国足球造成致命的影响。（同样，在香港对财务犯罪的调查也可能引出大陆官员，如果不是这样，他们完全有可能逃避惩罚。）这一次有20多人落网，其中包括一名长期以来被视为最诚实敬业的裁判——他拒绝腐败的行为为他赢得了“金哨”的称号。
官员们被逮捕之后，国家电视台里上演了一场比赛痛哭和相互指责的闹剧。痛哭者之一裁判员黄俊杰说，他有一次拒绝了一家俱乐部的贿赂，因为足协官员已经指示他如何操纵比赛。黄先生透露了一些操纵比赛的行话：如果一个官员给他发短信，让他“公平执法”，意思就是让他照顾客队。
这些人的被捕都依照绝对公正的司法程序，这在其它官员腐败案件中绝少见到。广州制药俱乐部一位高管杨旭在接受电视台采访时说：“在中国足球的大环境下，如果你不随波逐流，你就无法混下去。”他的俱乐部在2006年同意向另外一家俱乐部支付20万元人民币，以赢得比赛，这样广州就可以晋级中国足球超级联赛。
腐败的根源直达上层：中国足协主席南勇。据报道，南先生坦白10万元人民币就可以买到一个国家队的位置——虽然这已经不是新闻了。在最近两年里，共有100多人曾经入选国家队，这个数字出奇地高，几乎是常规情况下的两倍。如果那些最令人推崇的荣耀都是可以购买或者送人情的，我们怎么能指望中国足球出现英雄呢？
毛的等待
一些似乎不大可能的角色走上前台，充当了中国足球的救世主：房地产商。在中国社会的卡通漫画中，房地产商是罪大恶极的坏蛋，与它站在一起的是腐败官员，他们联手掠夺人民的土地。
但房地产商手里有钱。亿万富翁、共产党员许家印的恒大地产集团在2010年接手颜面尽失的广州制药俱乐部，这家俱乐部像皇家马德里一样一掷千金。恒大给球员提供丰厚的薪资和奖金，降低了球员打假球的动力，还建立了一所大型的足球学校。万达集团的王先生（也是一名党员）在阔别体育场11年后，向中国超级联赛提供了一份为期三年，价值1950万元人民币的赞助合同——据说是受到了中国政治局委员刘延东的鼓励。
中国超级联赛的16个俱乐部中的13个，东家要么是房地产商，要么是房地产商持有大量股份的企业。据说部分企业通过赞助足球俱乐部得到了地方政府低廉的地价，其中部分承诺要在这些土地上修建足球场。
那么孩子们会在这些足球场上踢球吗？令人意想不到的是，中国的孩子们并不是在排队等待成为球星的机会。或许这才是所有原因里，最让中国足球前景暗淡的因素。根据官方注册球员的数据，1990年到2000年，中国有60万名少年在进行有组织的足球比赛。从2000年到2005年，这个数字下降到18万人。今天（各种来源的数字不大一致），中国足协官方预测，进行有组织的足球比赛的少年只有10万多一点。
俄罗斯对中国，11比0。
另外一个尴尬的事件是，北京地坛小学足球队在与比他们小两号的西伯利亚伊尔库次克孩子的比赛中，以0比11落败。这些俄罗斯孩子在10月份来北京访问中，赢得了6场比赛中的5场（第6场是平局）。这件事引起了中国媒体和网络铺天盖地的自责声，大家都在探寻中国的少年足球怎么会沦落到这种境地。
尽管父母们依然对足球比赛保持着热情，但多年来的丑闻和失败让他们不愿鼓励孩子去从事这项运动，他们担心足球界的肮脏会玷污孩子的心灵。大部分人都不想让孩子——尤其是独子——在体育运动上浪费时间。中国的教育体制是应试教育，需要充分利用放学后的时间，这被视为成功的唯一道路。
如果孩子们想要运动消遣，很多人会来到篮球场。在姚明这个超级明星的照耀下，美国NBA在中国比欧洲足球联赛有更大的吸引力。篮球对运动场地的需求更小，土地在中国是稀缺商品（所以利润丰厚）。开发商顺手修建几块篮球场就可以解决问题，当然，这项运动的普及还是需要更多场地。
尽管如此，逐渐恢复的球迷数量也并没有让希望完全消失。还是有数百万人在观看中国足球超级联赛的电视转播，足球节目的收视率通常高于篮球节目（由于足球的尴尬处境，CCTV在2008年停止转播无利可图的联赛比赛）。数万人涌入大城市的体育场，观看国内的足球赛事。
在业内人士来看，今天的足球环境是职业联赛开始以来最好的——这是高调打压腐败行动必然的结果，也是转瞬即逝的结果。体育场里依然会有球迷高喊“黑哨”，在一次无力的射门或者笨拙的扑救之后会有人喊“打假球”。关系依然至关重要。
恒大俱乐部的韩国籍教练李章洙是在中国执教时间最长的外国人，他说中国运动员不像世界上其它顶级俱乐部的球员一样努力。“或许他们想的都是怎样和上级处好关系，中国大部分俱乐部都是这样。主要是搞关系，不是努力训练。”恒大最好的球员都是年薪数百万美元的外援。
经历了2000多年之后，中国依然在等待本土球星的出现。尽管它令人瞩目地克服了无数困难，在其它竞技项目中取得了辉煌的成就，但是足球，中国还要经过漫长的等待才能见到曙光。
原文：
The telling reasons why, at least in football, China is unlikely to rule the world in the near future
The Buddha tells the people he can fulfil only one of their wishes. Someone asks: “Could you lower the price of property in China so that people can afford it?” Seeing the Buddha frown in silence, the person makes another wish: “Could you make the Chinese football team qualify for a World Cup?” After a long sigh, the Buddha says: “Let’s talk about property prices.”
THE pass back to the goalkeeper seemed routine for Qingdao Hailifeng FC in its match against Sichuan FC in September 2009, even if the ball was struck a little too hard and the keeper only just managed to stop it running past him and into the net. Qingdao was safely ahead 3-0 with two minutes left in a meaningless match in China’s second division. What could be amiss?
Then a Qingdao assistant coach gestured for the keeper to come forward from the penalty area. Another Qingdao player promptly chipped the ball over him and towards the net, missing an own goal by inches. The final whistle blew soon afterwards.
Qingdao’s owner Du Yunqi was irate—at his team’s utter incompetence. As he would later admit to investigators, he had just lost a bet that there would be a total of four goals scored in the game. His humiliated assistant coach said on national television, “Afterward the boss was angry and scolded me, saying I bungled things and couldn’t even fix a match.”
The hapless case of “chip-shot gate”, as the Qingdao game came to be known, is just one low point in aeons of Chinese footballing ineptitude. The only time China qualified for the World Cup finals, in 2002, its side failed to score in any of its three matches; the team has never won a game at the Olympics. And Chinese players are sometimes too incompetent not only to win matches, but also to rig them.
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!”
Everyone is free to take aim, and publicly. When China was dispatched 2-0 by Belgium in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing (pictured above), a presenter on national CCTV said: “The Chinese football team decided to get out quickly, so as not to affect the people’s mood while they watch the Olympics.” Chinese fans chanted for the ouster of the head of China’s Football Association, Xie Yalong. The authorities sacked Mr Xie shortly after the games.
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.
A recent crackdown on football corruption offers little solace; it simply mirrors the pyrrhic campaigns against official corruption elsewhere in China. A mid-level functionary in China’s state security apparatus puts it candidly: “You know all those problems with society that you like to blame on China’s political system? Well it really is like that with football.”
Three little wishes
China cherishes its many inventions, real and purported. It recently laid official claim to creating Mongolian throat singing (much to Mongolia’s consternation). With the blessing of the international football body FIFA, China also claims the world’s earliest recorded mention of a sport similar to football, during the Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC. A version of the game cuju, or “kick ball”, involved a single, elevated net and two sides of 12 men.
In later centuries a version of the sport prevailed that favoured individual over team skill. China’s rulers took an interest; one Ming-era painting depicts the Xuande Emperor watching his subjects kick the ball around at court. However, by the time football was indigenously innovated in England in the 19th century, cuju and its variants had all but disappeared.
Football was then introduced to modern China as a foreign invention—but the young nationalists who would later lead the nation still took to it. In his early 20s Mao Zedong played keeper at a teachers’ college in his native Hunan Province. Deng Xiaoping spent precious francs to watch football at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, where he was studying. After he became one of China’s most powerful leaders, Deng, still a football fanatic, paid a visit to the national team, saying that he hoped they would become an excellent side “as soon as possible”.
That was in 1952. Four years later, after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) football team lost to a Yugoslav youth team, Mao met the Yugoslav side and (according to the PLA Daily) said, “We lost to you now and perhaps will keep losing for 12 years. But it would be very good to win in the 13th year.” By 1969 Chinese football was instead in a shambles, amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
This July, undeterred by the lack of progress in the intervening decades, Vice-President Xi Jinping, China’s presumed next leader and also a football fan, added his own “three wishes”: first, qualify for another World Cup; second, host a World Cup; finally, win a World Cup. Wisely, Mr Xi did not set any deadlines.
So whatever ails Chinese football, it is not a lack of passion from the country’s leaders. If anything, the opposite may be the problem. China’s Party-controlled, top-down approach to sport has yielded some magnificent results in individual sports, helping China win more Olympic gold medals in Beijing in 2008 than any other country. But this “Soviet model” has proven catastrophically unsuitable for assembling a team of 11 football players, much less a nation of them.
The first problem is the method of identifying young talent. The sport system selects children with particular attributes, such as long limbs, which could pay off in athletics, rowing, swimming, diving or gymnastics. These youngsters are the genetic wheat. But football’s legends can emerge from the seeming chaff of human physiques: think of stocky Diego Maradona, perhaps the greatest ever player, or his Argentine successor, the tiny genius Lionel Messi.
Then there is the matter of gold medals and opportunity costs. China pursues gold by funnelling athletes into obscure individual sports that can reap multiple medals in competitions. Football can only yield one medal or World Cup (two, counting the women: Chinese women have fared much better against a less-developed international field).
But the contradictions and weaknesses of Chinese capitalism have also played a part in the country’s footballing ignominy. In the early 1990s, with economic reforms taking hold, China slowly allowed some of its state-run teams to act more like commercial ventures, eventually establishing a professional league of clubs with corporate sponsorships, investments and higher salaries. The pay for players was still quite low in comparison with Europe, but big domestic stars began earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, a fortune at the time. The “professional” football era began in 1994, but as with any other organised activity in China, the state retained control.
In the event, adding heaps of money to an unaccountable bureaucracy made matters worse. State-owned enterprises, seeking glory on the pitch, lavished government money on the teams they sponsored. Private corporate investors followed suit, and cut-throat competition dramatically raised star-player salaries. A similar pay spiral has afflicted other countries’ leagues, too; but, in China, some clubs with less wealthy backers found distinctive and creative ways to survive.
Investors would contrive to fix games as favours to the local officials who nominally controlled the clubs (these types of matches are called “favour”, “relationship” or “tacit” matches, and are not viewed negatively by many within the game). Gambling syndicates, including the triads, began exerting influence over investors, referees, coaches and players. A spoils system evolved, and everyone took their cuts.
Blowing the golden whistle
By the end of the 1990s, it was clear to some insiders that few people in football cared about the quality or integrity of the game. One of the pioneer investors, Wang Jianlin of the Dalian Wanda Group, a property conglomerate, gave up his company’s sponsorship of the team in the north-eastern city of Dalian in 1999-2000—explaining years later that he did so in part because of the sport’s infiltration by gambling interests. Geely, a carmaker, withdrew its support of a club in the southern city of Guangzhou in 2001, just eight months after agreeing to invest. “I was shocked,” Geely’s chief, Li Shufu, told the media. “For a match, bribes of one million, two million yuan [$120,000-240,000] were offered, and not a single football official or referee ever got caught.”
Almost no one got caught because, in proper Communist fashion, an organisation that was deeply involved in fixing matches, the Chinese Football Association, was the same authority charged, in 2001, with investigating and punishing misconduct. A whitewash was the outcome, not coincidentally just months before China’s first World Cup finals in 2002.
After China’s ignominious exit from the competition, things got worse. Corporate sponsorships and investments declined, hitting salaries and making players yet more susceptible to gambling syndicates. At the same time, with the Chinese economy flourishing, the volume of betting rose dramatically.
Finally, in 2007, an investigation of match-fixing in Singapore followed a trail back to Chinese ringleaders. Singapore’s authorities tipped off police in north-eastern China, who uncovered match-fixing irregularities there, ultimately forcing, in 2009-10, a second, more severe reckoning for Chinese football. (Likewise, probes into financial crimes in Hong Kong have occasionally ensnared mainland officials who might otherwise have escaped punishment.) This time some 20 people, including a referee previously considered the game’s most honest—and known as the “golden whistle” for his incorruptibility—were caught in the crackdown.
As officials were detained, a parade of tearful confessions and recriminations played out on national television. Huang Junjie, a referee and one of those in tears, explained that he had once refused a bribe from a club to fix a match only because a leading football association official had already asked him to rig it. Mr Huang gave the public an idea of match-rigging lingo as well: when an official texted him to provide “even-handed justice”, it meant he should favour a visiting team over the home side.
Russia 11, China 0
Those caught gave damning justifications, candid in a way that officials in other corruption scandals are typically not allowed to be. “In the general environment of Chinese football at that time, it felt like if one doesn’t do it, one loses out,” said Yang Xu in televised comments: “one just seems like a fool.” An executive of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical FC, Mr Yang and his club had agreed to pay 200,000 yuan to another club to throw a game in 2006, so Guangzhou could get promoted to the Chinese Super League.
The rot of corruption went to the top: Nan Yong, then boss of the Chinese Football Association. Mr Nan reportedly confessed that players could buy spots on the national team for 100,000 yuan—though that was hardly a shock. Officials have long pressured national coaches to select or field certain players. In one recent stretch of about two years, more than 100 players were named to the national squad, a suspiciously high number and roughly double the usual figure. If even the most prized honours have become sellable commodities or patronage gifts, can Chinese football hope to have any heroes?
Mao’s long wait
Some rather unlikely candidates have stepped forward to be the saviours of Chinese football: property developers. In the hierarchy of cartoon villains in Chinese society, developers are among the most reviled, alongside the corrupt officials some allegedly cut deals with to take people’s land.
But developers do have cash. The Evergrande Real Estate Group, which is controlled by billionaire and Communist Party member Xu Jiayin, and which acquired the disgraced Guangzhou Pharmaceutical club in 2010, is spending money like Real Madrid. Evergrande pays generous salaries and victory bonuses, reducing players’ incentives to fix matches, and is building a huge football school. After 11 years away from the sport, Mr Wang of Wanda (also a party member) has taken on a three-year, 195-million yuan sponsorship of the Chinese Super League—reportedly with the encouragement of a member of China’s Politburo, Liu Yandong.
These days the owners of 13 of the 16 clubs in the Chinese Super League are either developers or have big property interests. Some have reportedly received cheaper land from local administrations in exchange for their support. Several intend to build more football pitches on it.
Will children come out to play, though? Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Chinese children are not queuing up to be football stars. Perhaps above all other factors, this is why hopes for the future of football are dim. From 1990 to 2000 there were more than 600,000 teenagers in China playing organised football, according to official counts of registered players; from 2000 to 2005 that number dropped to an average of 180,000; today (with statistics kept differently) Chinese football officials estimate the number of teenagers playing some form of organised football to be little more than 100,000.
Another grim indicator was the 11-0 embarrassment of a team from Beijing’s Ditan Primary School at the nimble feet of some diminutive Russian children from Irkutsk in Siberia. The Siberian youngsters won five of six friendly matches in a late October visit to Beijing (drawing the sixth), prompting a round of self-flagellation in the Chinese media and online postings explaining how youth football had arrived at this sorry state.
However keen they are to watch the game, years of scandal and failure have made parents sceptical about encouraging their children to play it. They worry that the football world is dirty and will corrupt their offspring. In any case, most don’t want their children—especially only children—to waste their time on sport. The education system is geared toward standardised tests, requiring hours of after-school work, which are considered by many to be the lone path to upward mobility.
When children do seek a diversion in sport, many find it on the basketball court. America’s NBA, with the help of Yao Ming, one of its stars until his recent retirement, has been marketed much more aggressively in China than have the European football leagues. Basketball also requires a much smaller patch of dirt to play on, and land is a scarce commodity (and so hugely profitable). The few pitches that are being set aside by developers will help, but thousands more are needed.
Still, if the resilient fans are any indication, hope is not entirely lost. Millions watch the Chinese Super League’s matches on television, which often draw better ratings than basketball in the regions where they are broadcast (reportedly embarrassed by the fecklessness in football, national CCTV stopped airing league games in 2008). Tens of thousands fill big-city stadiums to see their countrymen play badly.
Today’s game is described by insiders as cleaner than it has been since the professional era began—the logical but perhaps fleeting dividend of any high-profile corruption crackdown. There are still fans in the stands chanting “hei shao” or “black whistle”, and sometimes, as in the case of the chip shot in the botched Qingdao fix, “da jiaqiu” (“playing fake ball”). Connections and relationships continue to rule.
Evergrande’s South Korean manager Lee Jang-soo, the longest-serving foreign coach in Chinese football, says that Chinese players don’t put in the same effort as footballers in the world’s leading leagues: “Perhaps all they think of is to establish good relationships with their superiors,” he said. “Most clubs are like this. It’s mainly about connections, not hard work.” The best players at Evergrande, the nation’s top club, are mostly foreigners earning millions of dollars a year.
After, arguably, more than 2,000 years, China still awaits its first home-grown football star. Spectacularly able though it is to overcome its problems in other kinds of competition, in football, at least, China’s wait for glory looks set to be a long one.
其实我想说的是，他们看我们骂骂也就算了，也来凑热闹骂了？ 不就是个足球嘛，算个球啊，人类历史上没有足球的历史明显多得多嘛。。。 虽然对中国足球提不起兴致来，但是 要骂也是姐们自己家里骂，关你P事情哟！ 我擦，主席当过门将。。。习哥要办世界杯。。。 还三个愿望 估计在他任期之内一个也实现不了 办世界杯除了中国队不行，别的软件硬件都够办了 ”你看足球呢吧“
”没有，我看毛片呢“
————引自郭德纲的相声
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