Painful World Cup – China watches from the sidelines again

Analyst: Brazil 2014?

By Huang Daohen

Though the national team won’t make an appearance at the South Africa World Cup, tens of millions of Chinese fans will still be glued to their televisions, cheering on their favorite teams from South America and Europe.

But fans will never be completely happy watching a contest that does not include the home team, and many share the same question: will Chinese players make it to the 2014 Cup in Brazil?

Cai Wei, a former national player and now a coach, said this depends largely on the Chinese soccer authority’s ability to keep the game clean. But he said that government involvement bodes well for the game’s future. “When the central government interferes, it means you will periodically get a crackdown. Lots of people get arrested and gambling stops,” he said.

The last soccer crackdown was wider and deeper than many predicted. Many are looking to the government to improve the game’s quality in China.

But Cai said government involvement will also present problems. “To some extent, it is the government interference that has created the space for corruption and match fixing to exist in the first place,” he said. “When a sport is government-owned and government-controlled, people don’t have the same passion and the same personal responsibility for the sport. They don’t feel a sense of ownership.”

He said Chinese soccer should learn from the West, where governments focus on policy instead of day-to-day sport operations, allowing the market forces to determine its direction. “Market forces should have more of an impact on the soccer team’s leadership, owners, coaches and players. Those who deliver results, and not those who play the political game, should be rewarded,” he said.

Cai, who runs a soccer training center for children, said changes should start at the grassroots. He said the country should start training young players and not merely depend on the skill of coaches who get hired and fired every year.

“Where a sport is successful at the youth level, that’s when you start seeing good national players,” he said.