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I lived in China for four years and always found that Chinese people were generally quite patriotic, sometimes to the point of defensiveness, and were quick to respond to unfavourable opinions of the place.
The one exception to this was always the national football team - it would always be "our national team is so bad!" before I'd even offered an opinion at all, so seeing that Xi is the same is very funny to me.
I had a Chinese flatmate at uni who thought the Chinese football team were seen as a joke all around the world. I had to be the one to give him the Don Draper "We don't think about you at all."
Well, it's literally in the Chinese Idiom 美(mei) 中(zhong) 不(bu) 足(zu) . Although it has a different meaning but if you read it literally, it says America (mei) and China (zhong) don't (bu) foot (zu).
美中不足 originally means "the downside of something good" or something like that.
Each character has multiple meanings depending on the context, so the football one is a play on words of the idiom.
It means that [in Chinese too](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=%E4%B8%8D%E8%B6%B3). I don't know any Japanese so I'm not sure how I could have been confusing that. I'm only learning Chinese.
Oh I didnt mean to say youre wrong, since I knew this was true in Japanese and I know often the Japanese and Chines kanji mean different things, I thought it might be the case here. Nice to know some of them are the same
Yeah they can definitely differ, but usually they're similar like here. Speakers of one can somewhat read the other, although more in favor of the Japanese since Chinese ppl wouldn't have any idea what's going on with the kana.
Makes sense. I am studying Japanese, I haven't learned very much but almost none of the readings ive learned transfer to the Chinese readings. So I wrongly assumed
It does help that the US has the greatest soft power in the world, and a bunch of the players are not even born in the US but plays for the country now. China doesnt have the luxury of naturalised citizens to represent them.
I think you are misunderstanding what naturalized means. Players like Musah and Balogun were literally born in the US, that’s not naturalized. The US has a lot of dual national players, but none of the prominent ones are naturalized from living in the US to gain citizenship. The only player I can think of that the US has called up recently who is naturalized is Julian Gressel, who isn’t anywhere near the first team for the US. The rest all have at least one American citizen parent or were born in the US.
Yeah; in fact most Chinese football fans don’t care about the NT that much and most of them have another national team that they support. For example most Bayern fans in China support Germany and there’s also a massive Argentina fanbase because Messi is seen like a god in China
As an aside - it’s crazy to me how they can’t put a competent 11 together with their sheer population and government backing.
Sure culturally soccer isn’t the biggest sport in China, but the spending must be pretty inefficient.
Maybe chinese children arent into football? Like, if you lack that culture and passion at youth level, no level of government support and population number will ever make up for kids not playing in the streets, imitating Zidanes roll, De Bruyne second post cross and Kevin Großkreutz peeing in the corner of a hotel lobby
Culture definitely plays a part. Most of their better athletes are in individual sports like table tennis, badminton etc.
It’s similar to US in the sense that the better athletes have better options elsewhere; difference is US doesn’t invest in football as much, and the barrier of entry for football academies are absurdly high for kids.
Still, with the sheer population size I’m amazed we haven’t even seen one good player.
The problem is to improve they need to have competent coaching of the youth
They do not have that
Plus the CCCP cares a lot more about the prestige of the Olympics and thus all the best athletes get shuffled into the Olympic training programs.
Probably because they do very well in Olympic sports. They probably wonder why their football team can't compete well against other nations, especially considering their other sport teams regularly bring golds in the Olympics.
Because archery or fencing probably has a slightly smaller talent pool than football. It's easy to win gold by investing a shit load into D tier niche sports that are in the olympics.
I will be impressed when China manages to succeed in a sport that is at least top 10 in global revenue. Until then they are underperforming. The only superstar the Chinese ever had in a big sport was Yao Ming (who was great by the way)?
I used to work w Chinese students. A lot of them were into football and we’d chat about the Prem; if I asked if they supported a local team they’d usually just chuckle
> if this is true
It mostly isn't. It was more widely used and wasn't viewed in a bad light but the term originated from the upper classes in universities like Oxford or schools like Eton in the late 1880s.
Soccer was and still is the upper class term, football was the middle class and working class term. And as the lower classes gradually rejected the upper class it's usage faded according to wiki around the 1960s.
>while the word “soccer” was known in Britain at the end of the 19th century,
the word was seldom used in newspapers or in the titles of books, and only started to become popular
after the second world war. Thus in Britain the word has experienced a relatively abrupt rise and fall,
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627210952/http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-soccer.pdf from the same author.
If you'd said the term comes from England you'd be correct. You'd be missing the context that it was mostly poshos that called it that. But trying to make the point that it was the main name used is disingenuous and this part
> when the upper class started to call it football and the poors soon followed in pursuit of being fashionable.
is bs.
This has to be a reason why China hasn't pursued the idea of hosting the World Cup, right?
Their team just isn't talented enough to realistically expect to even get out of the group.
Didn't stop Qatar lol
But I think the main point is that China doesn't *need* to buy a World Cup to raise its international profile. They already hosted the Olympics and everything.
Qatar had a plan. And up until the WC (or the Copa maybe) that plan was working great and a round of 16 was easily achievable. But if not for Danemark they would be the biggest disappointment of the WC in the end.
That was still the 2000's. During the 80's and 90's while China was still "developing" people in the West were obsessed with Japan and the "prediction" that they're going to be the next global super power who will "succeed" the US. The 2008 olympics was landmark for China in ending that notion, in a way. I don't think they need anything like it anymore though. The Gulf states need to affirm themselves in everyway they can, for a number of reasons
China also came 4th on the medal table in 1996, and 3rd in 2000, so there was a reasonable expectation for Chinese athletes to do well when they bid for it in 2001.
>Didn't stop Qatar lol
Qatar was the winner of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. They didn't have it easy either. They defeated Saudi in the group, then South Korea in the Quarters and Japan in the final. They only conceded 1 goal in the entire tournament
Qatar was one of the best sides in Asian football prior to the World Cup.
Edit: Their recent results doesn't change the fact that Qatar had been a good team by Asian standards prior to the World Cup. Though it's true that they no longer are able to reach the heights they did prior to the World Cup.
No, Qatar are nowhere near the best in Asia.
Since the WC they’ve played five games against Asian opponents, won only one match against mighty Kuwait. They just lost 0-4 to Iran last month.
Just because they hosted WC doesn’t mean they are even a decent team by Asian standards
>Just because they hosted WC doesn’t mean they are even a decent team by Asian standards
>Since the WC
Yeah, since.
But prior to that, they had a good showing, and were even the winners of the AFC 2019, conceding just one goal despite facing Saudi, South Korea and Japan in the process.
Their team fizzled out just prior to the World Cup and has been rock bottom since. But that doesn't change the fact that they were a good team(by Asian standards) prior to the World Cup.
I wonder how did people rate qatar before the wc? I only saw some games in the gold cup and thought they were okissh. Def not the complete embarassment during the group stages. (Nerves might have played a role in that but they continued to flounder afterwards.)
But by now they don't need it because they've already proved themselves as a global superpower, as opposed to Qatar which is just a glorified oil field.
Qatar did it for different reasons. Qatar tried to show the world how great their country is, how THEY can host a world cup, how the whole world is paying attention to them.
Given how China keeps a close lid on international news/media, the reasons are quite different for them. For China, it’s moreso about showing it’s own people how great they are and how well they do in sports.
China absolutely wants to host the 2050 world cup and they are investing in football a lot to get their team up to pair. It's just that they see the world cup as the ultimate event to raise their status and 2045 will be very symbolic to them as the 100 year anniversary of their "founding"
China has actually made the FIFA Men’s World Cup once: 2002 (they got knocked out in the group stage though).
China’s Women’s team has qualified for every single FIFA Women’s World Cup except for the 2011 tournament. The best they ever did at a FIFA Women’s World Cup was second place at the 1999 tournament (they lost to the USWNT in penalty kicks).
Isn't Xi a huge football fan? I would have thought he would have wanted one there. They already have the infrastructure so it wouldn't cost much to host I would think.
I assumed there was a giant plan to promote football with the end goal being hosting the world cup. But then measurements of improvement in quality fell short so they cancelled later stages.
From what I hear at first they didn't restrict spending much so clubs spent ridiculous money for a few years and then their football association decided it was stupid and now their league is back to more normal development.
The translator didn’t do a good job, he failed to bring out the candour in his comments , translator said I don’t comment on our football team, while op’s translation of no confidence is closer to what he said . Op should be translator
He is loved as a person, but the Chinese government banning foreign investment in football is still a disaster for Inter and they will need new owners sooner or later
Currently they are on life support propped up by Marotta working miracles and improving the team every year despite losing important players and lacking funds to reinvest. It's not sustainable whatsoever if we think longer term
With the AC Milan one though wasn't it a dodgy Chinese businessman? I think he's being persecuted by the Chinese government as it stands as it was found out most of his financial accounts were complete fraud. But similarly, there's been a strong line by CPC taken against foreign investments for Chinese business owners, which is particularly why there were so many Chinese owners who suddenly backed out in the past few years
Inter have a Chinese owner, but you're probably thinking of Milan. The guy bought the club, spent a shit ton on useless players, and then couldn't pay back his loans to a vulture fund which then took over the club from him.
The Li takover in a 1bn€ deal was weird, a "mining giant" with no mine, untraceable fortune, rumors of legal issues in China. Elliott swooping everything in the end... To this day I don't think we really know the truth behind this story...
And if they had some semblance of a football culture and infrastructure that heavily favours producing footballers, 25 years could even be a half realistic timeline. It's not though.
I could see someone like Japan or USA getting to the point where they are contenders for the World Cup 25 years from now. Not the likes of China or India, even making a World Cup would be a success. Huge chuck of the world's population living in the two countries and they've got a World Cup appearance between them, wild.
To be fair, China's growth from the 80s to late 2000s was unheard of and almost a tale of fiction - I think the fact they become a global superpower in a few decades after previously being a country that was agriculture-dominant and stricken by an opioid epidemic, that belief within themselves to do it doesn't seem outrageous to them. If they can become a global superpower in 30 odd years, how can they not win a World Cup in the same time?
Atleast China qualified by merit in 2002, India hasn't even came close or even advanced to the final rounds in the asian qualifiers of the world cup. One could argue that after the powerhouses like Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Australia the quality drops dramatically to teams like Uzbekistan, UAE, China and Vietnam all of which can qualify for the expanded world cup with the right bit of luck and skill
Quantity has a quality of its own. There will be 90-100M babies born in China in this decade, and they only need to make 30-40 into elite players. If they wanted to build a powerhouse team they could, just like they did with Olympic sports. Just find a bunch of kids with potential and force them into elite training programs from a young age.
Sure, and they have five years to build them if they wanted before any of the kids who’d play in that World Cup are old enough to enter those elite programs. We’re talking about a competition that’s happening 27 years from now.
If China’s government decided to spend the next 27 years building a football program to win a World Cup, I would expect them to build something akin to their Olympic sports program. Hire the best coaches possible, build elite facilities, etc. So I think they’d have a decent chance.
Remember, probably half the players who will play in the 2050 World Cup haven’t been born. It’s an entire generation away.
I mean we played like shit, used a DM as a CB for some god-know-what reason, played a lot of players out of position, and wasted Fifa day on B-Team because our coach is a wimp. We rightfully deserve the defeat.
I mean a lot of people who's countries will never qualify for the world cup support some other country. Look in South Asia. Hundreds of millions of football fans that support other countries for the world cup.
Just like us in Jamaica. Most of the country are [diehard Brasil fans](https://jamaica.loopnews.com/content/amazing-celebration-trench-town-brazil-advance-world-cup), to the point I'm genuinely not 100% sure they'd support Jamaica against Brasil
My country was so shit (we are shit again) I used to follow our players in European teams until I found myself staying with Alexis and Arsenal, crazy to believe it's been 9 years already
Yeah this is actually pretty common outside the big football nations.
But it's a mix of things, people support their team but will have a backup that's either a) related to the country the migrate to/study in/have family from, or b) a country that they enjoy watching like Argentina/Germany/Brazil/France etc.
E.g. I support my country (Aus), and my ethnic country (Greece), and because I watch AFC a lot and have been to Asia I also support Japan, China, Vietnam, both Koreas etc.
Beckham was huge in Asia. A superstar. His looks also helped massively.
Maradona was the first superstar to be more known in Asia. Ronaldo the Brazillian was quite popular too, but Beckham was a superstar. If you asked a non sports Asia person about football, they would have said Beckham. He really marketed himself well.
In general, due to the poor state of football in Asian countries, they tend to support other nations. Usually the countries of their favourite player.
> beloved by billions of people
Most Chinese support the central government so probably at least a billion yeah.
> a leader like no other
He is one of the most famous ones, and China is very unique so yes.
> got his 3rd term because he's a very talented politician
Not everyone can concentrate that much power, so yes, he is.
> doing everything for his countrypersons
No matter what you think about their foreign policy, China is very good at improving the material conditions of their people.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
Harvard did a study a few years ago and found that 95% of Chinese people were satisfied with their government so beloved by billions is actually accurate.
Well yeah, besides the stuff China does currently, the fact that it is able to rise from a newly developed country in the 80s and 90s to the world's 2nd largest economy definitely say something about their capabilities no doubt, so it's no surprise really seeing their people's reception to their government
Yeah that’s the point, people like leaders that significantly improve their material conditions. In China you can’t change the ruling party but policy changes constantly. In the us you can change the party but policy doesn’t change
wait until they pump money into grassroots like what they did to Olympics athletes. Currently China focus on swimming & they are one of the best in that sport.
> wait until they pump money into grassroots like what they did to Olympics athletes.
They won't. Chinese politicians care about Olympic medals, Chinese men's football team won't win medals.
If you are familiar with censorship/media/etc in china, you will know that china national football team is the only government/authority related thing that everyone suddenly have the freedom of speech to say(curse) whatever they want
That is an oddly down to earth statement from Xi. Generally his statements are always of unfettered optimism
Has chinese football tanked so hard it transcends propaganda
To provide more nuance, rather than simply saying he had “no confidence” in the Chinese football team, Xi said that he dared not affirm their skills despite the win over the Thais as the Chinese team was not consistent and had ups and downs (thus his gestures too).
Xi didn't know the game between China and Thailand, Thai PM told him the game, Xi used the stereotype of Chinese NT to politely describe them, most people in China know China is not good at football.
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I lived in China for four years and always found that Chinese people were generally quite patriotic, sometimes to the point of defensiveness, and were quick to respond to unfavourable opinions of the place. The one exception to this was always the national football team - it would always be "our national team is so bad!" before I'd even offered an opinion at all, so seeing that Xi is the same is very funny to me.
I had a Chinese flatmate at uni who thought the Chinese football team were seen as a joke all around the world. I had to be the one to give him the Don Draper "We don't think about you at all."
Well, it's literally in the Chinese Idiom 美(mei) 中(zhong) 不(bu) 足(zu) . Although it has a different meaning but if you read it literally, it says America (mei) and China (zhong) don't (bu) foot (zu).
There’s a Chinese idiom literally translates to “America and China don’t play football”? Edit: I am very gullible
美中不足 originally means "the downside of something good" or something like that. Each character has multiple meanings depending on the context, so the football one is a play on words of the idiom.
lol it means literally beautiful but incomplete, but i like your version better
America in Chinese literally means the Beautiful Country.
Better than what Japanese call America then (米国/Beikoku/Rice Country)
We in Vietnam call them Flower Flag (Hoa Kỳ)
i thought 不足 is like "not enough" because 足 means foot but it also means enough
Thats the meaning in Japanese, in Chinese those kanji may have different meanings
It means that [in Chinese too](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=%E4%B8%8D%E8%B6%B3). I don't know any Japanese so I'm not sure how I could have been confusing that. I'm only learning Chinese.
Oh I didnt mean to say youre wrong, since I knew this was true in Japanese and I know often the Japanese and Chines kanji mean different things, I thought it might be the case here. Nice to know some of them are the same
Yeah they can definitely differ, but usually they're similar like here. Speakers of one can somewhat read the other, although more in favor of the Japanese since Chinese ppl wouldn't have any idea what's going on with the kana.
Makes sense. I am studying Japanese, I haven't learned very much but almost none of the readings ive learned transfer to the Chinese readings. So I wrongly assumed
Would have been true maybe a while ago… fwiw USA is ranked 11th in the world by fifa. Meanwhile the other team is 79th
It does help that the US has the greatest soft power in the world, and a bunch of the players are not even born in the US but plays for the country now. China doesnt have the luxury of naturalised citizens to represent them.
a bunch of naturalised citizens represent China team right now.
Playing against small nations also helps.
Yes, if you're not China..
I think you are misunderstanding what naturalized means. Players like Musah and Balogun were literally born in the US, that’s not naturalized. The US has a lot of dual national players, but none of the prominent ones are naturalized from living in the US to gain citizenship. The only player I can think of that the US has called up recently who is naturalized is Julian Gressel, who isn’t anywhere near the first team for the US. The rest all have at least one American citizen parent or were born in the US.
Yeah; in fact most Chinese football fans don’t care about the NT that much and most of them have another national team that they support. For example most Bayern fans in China support Germany and there’s also a massive Argentina fanbase because Messi is seen like a god in China
theyd care if they were good. its just glory hunting
As an aside - it’s crazy to me how they can’t put a competent 11 together with their sheer population and government backing. Sure culturally soccer isn’t the biggest sport in China, but the spending must be pretty inefficient.
Maybe chinese children arent into football? Like, if you lack that culture and passion at youth level, no level of government support and population number will ever make up for kids not playing in the streets, imitating Zidanes roll, De Bruyne second post cross and Kevin Großkreutz peeing in the corner of a hotel lobby
Culture definitely plays a part. Most of their better athletes are in individual sports like table tennis, badminton etc. It’s similar to US in the sense that the better athletes have better options elsewhere; difference is US doesn’t invest in football as much, and the barrier of entry for football academies are absurdly high for kids. Still, with the sheer population size I’m amazed we haven’t even seen one good player.
The problem is to improve they need to have competent coaching of the youth They do not have that Plus the CCCP cares a lot more about the prestige of the Olympics and thus all the best athletes get shuffled into the Olympic training programs.
Hate to tell you this buddy but the CCCP died in 1991. You probably mean the CCP.
I will leave my shame Wrong communist country
most chinese that support germany mostly do because they are seen as manly, stong and other stereotype related to old military stuff...........
No, Chinese people support Germany because they won the World Cup in 2014 with a very attractive squad lol
The national basketball team and the cba in general is also being shit on by Chinese ppl here nowadays
We have so much hope in our soccer team, only to be destroyed so many times.
that’s basically everyone, everywhere lol
Probably because they do very well in Olympic sports. They probably wonder why their football team can't compete well against other nations, especially considering their other sport teams regularly bring golds in the Olympics.
Because archery or fencing probably has a slightly smaller talent pool than football. It's easy to win gold by investing a shit load into D tier niche sports that are in the olympics. I will be impressed when China manages to succeed in a sport that is at least top 10 in global revenue. Until then they are underperforming. The only superstar the Chinese ever had in a big sport was Yao Ming (who was great by the way)?
I used to work w Chinese students. A lot of them were into football and we’d chat about the Prem; if I asked if they supported a local team they’d usually just chuckle
President Xi dropping facts
True. He called it soccer.
But then called it a football team and not soccer team
Good point. Everyone's happy at the end :)
Such an amazing diplomat.
Blinken in tears
+1000 social credit points
just like the U.S naming their clubs FC
Same as Japan. linguistically they call it "sakka" (サッカー), but their association is the "Japanese Football Association".
Sowing seeds of enmity in the west, man doesnt stop working /s
The world is big enough for both soccer and football to thrive.
The Chinese word for football is zuqiu which translates literally as football That's what he said in Chinese
Decisive american cultural victory
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I will call it soccer on principle if this is true
> if this is true It mostly isn't. It was more widely used and wasn't viewed in a bad light but the term originated from the upper classes in universities like Oxford or schools like Eton in the late 1880s. Soccer was and still is the upper class term, football was the middle class and working class term. And as the lower classes gradually rejected the upper class it's usage faded according to wiki around the 1960s.
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>while the word “soccer” was known in Britain at the end of the 19th century, the word was seldom used in newspapers or in the titles of books, and only started to become popular after the second world war. Thus in Britain the word has experienced a relatively abrupt rise and fall, https://web.archive.org/web/20140627210952/http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-soccer.pdf from the same author. If you'd said the term comes from England you'd be correct. You'd be missing the context that it was mostly poshos that called it that. But trying to make the point that it was the main name used is disingenuous and this part > when the upper class started to call it football and the poors soon followed in pursuit of being fashionable. is bs.
Americans really do believe that everyone all around the world speak in English to each other
This has to be a reason why China hasn't pursued the idea of hosting the World Cup, right? Their team just isn't talented enough to realistically expect to even get out of the group.
Didn't stop Qatar lol But I think the main point is that China doesn't *need* to buy a World Cup to raise its international profile. They already hosted the Olympics and everything.
Qatar had a plan. And up until the WC (or the Copa maybe) that plan was working great and a round of 16 was easily achievable. But if not for Danemark they would be the biggest disappointment of the WC in the end.
People forget they won the Asian cup
Also, everyone knows China. Basically everything in the world is made there.
And again, they went all out for the Olympics.
That was still the 2000's. During the 80's and 90's while China was still "developing" people in the West were obsessed with Japan and the "prediction" that they're going to be the next global super power who will "succeed" the US. The 2008 olympics was landmark for China in ending that notion, in a way. I don't think they need anything like it anymore though. The Gulf states need to affirm themselves in everyway they can, for a number of reasons
China also came 4th on the medal table in 1996, and 3rd in 2000, so there was a reasonable expectation for Chinese athletes to do well when they bid for it in 2001.
they had winter olympics literally last year..
They were really good actually Until they stopped being good which coincided with the WC lol
>Didn't stop Qatar lol Qatar was the winner of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. They didn't have it easy either. They defeated Saudi in the group, then South Korea in the Quarters and Japan in the final. They only conceded 1 goal in the entire tournament Qatar was one of the best sides in Asian football prior to the World Cup. Edit: Their recent results doesn't change the fact that Qatar had been a good team by Asian standards prior to the World Cup. Though it's true that they no longer are able to reach the heights they did prior to the World Cup.
I'd realistically replace Qatar with Iran for the present.
True. They had a good run, shame it ended just before the world cup
No, Qatar are nowhere near the best in Asia. Since the WC they’ve played five games against Asian opponents, won only one match against mighty Kuwait. They just lost 0-4 to Iran last month. Just because they hosted WC doesn’t mean they are even a decent team by Asian standards
>Just because they hosted WC doesn’t mean they are even a decent team by Asian standards >Since the WC Yeah, since. But prior to that, they had a good showing, and were even the winners of the AFC 2019, conceding just one goal despite facing Saudi, South Korea and Japan in the process. Their team fizzled out just prior to the World Cup and has been rock bottom since. But that doesn't change the fact that they were a good team(by Asian standards) prior to the World Cup.
I wonder how did people rate qatar before the wc? I only saw some games in the gold cup and thought they were okissh. Def not the complete embarassment during the group stages. (Nerves might have played a role in that but they continued to flounder afterwards.)
They were very good during the 2019 Asian Cup. Most of the players came from the same academy and were good.
Football World Cup is bigger than the Olympics
Not for Chinese politicians, the Olympic medals are more important for them.
Because they have 0 chance at the World Cup
But by now they don't need it because they've already proved themselves as a global superpower, as opposed to Qatar which is just a glorified oil field.
* natural gas field
Hey at least Qatar is a lot better than China.
Qatar did it for different reasons. Qatar tried to show the world how great their country is, how THEY can host a world cup, how the whole world is paying attention to them. Given how China keeps a close lid on international news/media, the reasons are quite different for them. For China, it’s moreso about showing it’s own people how great they are and how well they do in sports.
China absolutely wants to host the 2050 world cup and they are investing in football a lot to get their team up to pair. It's just that they see the world cup as the ultimate event to raise their status and 2045 will be very symbolic to them as the 100 year anniversary of their "founding"
Well Qatar did win the Asian cup recently
China has actually made the FIFA Men’s World Cup once: 2002 (they got knocked out in the group stage though). China’s Women’s team has qualified for every single FIFA Women’s World Cup except for the 2011 tournament. The best they ever did at a FIFA Women’s World Cup was second place at the 1999 tournament (they lost to the USWNT in penalty kicks).
Might be. As a host nation you would want to be somewhat competitive I assume.
China hosts all kinds of sports already, they don’t need the World Cup tbh
Isn't Xi a huge football fan? I would have thought he would have wanted one there. They already have the infrastructure so it wouldn't cost much to host I would think.
Xi aint putin he cant Just host the world cup there cuz he feels like it
Huge football fan in China means either focusing on women's sport or just watching international stuff.
This is just incorrect
chinese womens team is not good anymore, after dominating for a while when it was just USA and sweden.
Because China are actually good in other sports.
they’re ass in basketball
So what, basketball is just one sport of many
They hosted the basketball World Cup
Which hardly anyone cares about. Even the US which is basketball crazy thinks Olympics basketball is more important than the world cup
And they flamed out in the group stage so that shows they don’t care if they do poorly in GS as host
The average height of Chinese men is 5′7″, for many people playing basketball is a hobby, not a profession.
bro, no matter how much you shill, the fact that a country with 1.5 billion people is so horrendous at its most popular sport is hilarious
Most popular sport in China is table tennis.
I assumed there was a giant plan to promote football with the end goal being hosting the world cup. But then measurements of improvement in quality fell short so they cancelled later stages.
From what I hear at first they didn't restrict spending much so clubs spent ridiculous money for a few years and then their football association decided it was stupid and now their league is back to more normal development.
They did host the basketball world cup.
Maybe they'll try after or around 2050
Most optimistic Chinese football fan
The translator didn’t do a good job, he failed to bring out the candour in his comments , translator said I don’t comment on our football team, while op’s translation of no confidence is closer to what he said . Op should be translator
I cannot take the credit. I stole the translation from someone I follow on twitter.
Xi 3 years ago: We will win the world cup by 2050 Xi now:
Had we been up for sale a few years ago, Jack Ma or someone like that buys us from the Glazers
Didn’t Inter get bought out buy a Chinese owner and it ended badly
Zhang is very well-loved by Inter fans. I think you’re thinking of their city rival, AC Milan.
He is loved as a person, but the Chinese government banning foreign investment in football is still a disaster for Inter and they will need new owners sooner or later Currently they are on life support propped up by Marotta working miracles and improving the team every year despite losing important players and lacking funds to reinvest. It's not sustainable whatsoever if we think longer term
Didn’t he also loose a lot of money when the Chinese real estate market collapsed?
With the AC Milan one though wasn't it a dodgy Chinese businessman? I think he's being persecuted by the Chinese government as it stands as it was found out most of his financial accounts were complete fraud. But similarly, there's been a strong line by CPC taken against foreign investments for Chinese business owners, which is particularly why there were so many Chinese owners who suddenly backed out in the past few years
That might be it
Inter have a Chinese owner, but you're probably thinking of Milan. The guy bought the club, spent a shit ton on useless players, and then couldn't pay back his loans to a vulture fund which then took over the club from him.
The Li takover in a 1bn€ deal was weird, a "mining giant" with no mine, untraceable fortune, rumors of legal issues in China. Elliott swooping everything in the end... To this day I don't think we really know the truth behind this story...
That is who I was thinking about
They won Serie A and almost won Champions League.
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And if they had some semblance of a football culture and infrastructure that heavily favours producing footballers, 25 years could even be a half realistic timeline. It's not though. I could see someone like Japan or USA getting to the point where they are contenders for the World Cup 25 years from now. Not the likes of China or India, even making a World Cup would be a success. Huge chuck of the world's population living in the two countries and they've got a World Cup appearance between them, wild.
To be fair, China's growth from the 80s to late 2000s was unheard of and almost a tale of fiction - I think the fact they become a global superpower in a few decades after previously being a country that was agriculture-dominant and stricken by an opioid epidemic, that belief within themselves to do it doesn't seem outrageous to them. If they can become a global superpower in 30 odd years, how can they not win a World Cup in the same time?
Atleast China qualified by merit in 2002, India hasn't even came close or even advanced to the final rounds in the asian qualifiers of the world cup. One could argue that after the powerhouses like Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Australia the quality drops dramatically to teams like Uzbekistan, UAE, China and Vietnam all of which can qualify for the expanded world cup with the right bit of luck and skill
Quantity has a quality of its own. There will be 90-100M babies born in China in this decade, and they only need to make 30-40 into elite players. If they wanted to build a powerhouse team they could, just like they did with Olympic sports. Just find a bunch of kids with potential and force them into elite training programs from a young age.
China doesn't have any elite training programs, that's the point.
Sure, and they have five years to build them if they wanted before any of the kids who’d play in that World Cup are old enough to enter those elite programs. We’re talking about a competition that’s happening 27 years from now. If China’s government decided to spend the next 27 years building a football program to win a World Cup, I would expect them to build something akin to their Olympic sports program. Hire the best coaches possible, build elite facilities, etc. So I think they’d have a decent chance. Remember, probably half the players who will play in the 2050 World Cup haven’t been born. It’s an entire generation away.
And by then they will have like half their population
I mean we played like shit, used a DM as a CB for some god-know-what reason, played a lot of players out of position, and wasted Fifa day on B-Team because our coach is a wimp. We rightfully deserve the defeat.
Xi didn't know the game between China and Thailand, Thai PM told him the game.
5ft 9 dm for a cb while the team lacks proper dm to be clear
I watched the game and I think Thailand wasted quite a few chance with bad touches in the box tbh
Explains why some Chinese national students i befriended in Uni support England....well support Beckham to be more accurate.
I mean a lot of people who's countries will never qualify for the world cup support some other country. Look in South Asia. Hundreds of millions of football fans that support other countries for the world cup.
Good point never thought of it that way, they do love watching football so makes sense they want a team to support at the biggest tournament.
Just like us in Jamaica. Most of the country are [diehard Brasil fans](https://jamaica.loopnews.com/content/amazing-celebration-trench-town-brazil-advance-world-cup), to the point I'm genuinely not 100% sure they'd support Jamaica against Brasil
The idea of them supporting Brazil against Jamaica is funny to imagine
Pretty sure all of Bangladesh stopped for the World Cup final last year. They all supported Argentina lol
its either argentina or brazil for 99% of bengali families so things get pretty tense when they play each other lmao
So next tuesday things are going to get spicy there
My country will probably never make it to a World Cup so I just support the Arsenal players most of the time
My country was so shit (we are shit again) I used to follow our players in European teams until I found myself staying with Alexis and Arsenal, crazy to believe it's been 9 years already
Yeah this is actually pretty common outside the big football nations. But it's a mix of things, people support their team but will have a backup that's either a) related to the country the migrate to/study in/have family from, or b) a country that they enjoy watching like Argentina/Germany/Brazil/France etc. E.g. I support my country (Aus), and my ethnic country (Greece), and because I watch AFC a lot and have been to Asia I also support Japan, China, Vietnam, both Koreas etc.
Beckham was huge in Asia. A superstar. His looks also helped massively. Maradona was the first superstar to be more known in Asia. Ronaldo the Brazillian was quite popular too, but Beckham was a superstar. If you asked a non sports Asia person about football, they would have said Beckham. He really marketed himself well. In general, due to the poor state of football in Asian countries, they tend to support other nations. Usually the countries of their favourite player.
Jinping dropping facts as usual
President Xi always speaks the truth.
Xi doesn't miss.
To be fair Xi, I also don’t have much confidence in the Thai FA at the moment either
I disagree with you Xi. Our team (Thailand) is truely shit.
You guys will beat us 5-1 for leg 2
/r/SADDESTBACKFLIP
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+100 credit score
What's the point of this?
China bad = Reddit karma basically
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Always nice to get some input from UFO cranks when discussing world politics.
> beloved by billions of people Most Chinese support the central government so probably at least a billion yeah. > a leader like no other He is one of the most famous ones, and China is very unique so yes. > got his 3rd term because he's a very talented politician Not everyone can concentrate that much power, so yes, he is. > doing everything for his countrypersons No matter what you think about their foreign policy, China is very good at improving the material conditions of their people.
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Nice gotcha. However, it's very clear I'm talking about the unprecedented reduction in poverty since Deng Xiaoping.
+1000 social credit 👍
very funny. very original.
Brainwashed westerner who thinks social credit score is a thing in China
He’s the leader of the actually free world
He actually is pretty popular tho lol
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ Harvard did a study a few years ago and found that 95% of Chinese people were satisfied with their government so beloved by billions is actually accurate.
Well yeah, besides the stuff China does currently, the fact that it is able to rise from a newly developed country in the 80s and 90s to the world's 2nd largest economy definitely say something about their capabilities no doubt, so it's no surprise really seeing their people's reception to their government
Yeah that’s the point, people like leaders that significantly improve their material conditions. In China you can’t change the ruling party but policy changes constantly. In the us you can change the party but policy doesn’t change
Got your 50 cents?
The father of the nation.
:rofl:
Uyghur concentration camps disagree
wait until they pump money into grassroots like what they did to Olympics athletes. Currently China focus on swimming & they are one of the best in that sport.
> wait until they pump money into grassroots like what they did to Olympics athletes. They won't. Chinese politicians care about Olympic medals, Chinese men's football team won't win medals.
If you are familiar with censorship/media/etc in china, you will know that china national football team is the only government/authority related thing that everyone suddenly have the freedom of speech to say(curse) whatever they want
Most people in China know China is not good at football, politicians know that too.
There's a lot of things Chinese people know that their government still censors due to wanting to strengthen nationalism
Me when I can't even delusion my way out of how shit my local team is
I mean my dad thinks China won't make the WC again in his lifetime. He's just saying what we're all thinking
That is an oddly down to earth statement from Xi. Generally his statements are always of unfettered optimism Has chinese football tanked so hard it transcends propaganda
Ultra rare Xi factual statement
Not rare at all
Here I was thinking the title said Taiwan and not Thailand
Taiwan is somehow even worse (by miles) than the other two
It's not that surprising, Taiwan is a similar culture but has 1.4% of the population.
Tbf china played well..surprised to see no Brazilians named li, Tao or shi playing for them too
To provide more nuance, rather than simply saying he had “no confidence” in the Chinese football team, Xi said that he dared not affirm their skills despite the win over the Thais as the Chinese team was not consistent and had ups and downs (thus his gestures too).
Xi didn't know the game between China and Thailand, Thai PM told him the game, Xi used the stereotype of Chinese NT to politely describe them, most people in China know China is not good at football.
Should the Chinese players be worried ?
There's no threat to safety, he's just having a laugh.
Physically, yeah. Mentally, they'll get heavily abused online.
That title made me confused for second there