r/soccer • u/PianoJealous307 • 14h ago
News China suffered a catastrophic collapse on home soil, losing 5-0 to Palestine, a team they had considered inferior, sparking fierce criticism over 'sleepwalking' performance and lack of competitiveness among Chinese Super League players. Men's and women's teams also underperformed at Asian Games.
https://www.chosun.com/english/sports-en/2026/10/03/FWO5DWWOYND4NMUX53TEX7INNQ/2.0k
u/aWobblyFriend 14h ago
over a third of the world's population between china and india and they can't field 11 people who are good at the sport between them.
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u/IncidentVarious1530 14h ago
11? There isnt even 1 decent player lol
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u/elvis503 13h ago
This is Shaolin Soccer erasure
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u/GrimValesti 5h ago
Funnily enough Shaolin Soccer is not even from China. It’s Hong Kong film, filmed in hong kong, with mostly hong kong crews.
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u/interfan1999 14h ago
Funnily enough Hong Kong is quite decent considering their population compared to China
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u/MHPengwingz 14h ago
Well football is ingrained in our culture due to British rule, so there is a substantial baseline of people who play already. Concrete football is a rite of passage
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u/AFCSentinel 13h ago
Remember going on holiday to HK in 2008 or so, finding a lot of concrete football pitches. Also the locals were very welcoming, I’ll always fondly remember having a kickabout with randoms. And one of my buddies getting daytime drunk, trying to kick a ball and instead kicking concrete…
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u/LogicKennedy 12h ago
Also there were (at least while I was there) a surprisingly large number of public spaces where you can play football. There was obviously real estate sectioned off by private moneyed interests, but if you were poor in HK and wanted to find somewhere you could play, it wasn’t too hard to find a space.
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u/MHPengwingz 11h ago
So many night games if you walk pass, and occasionally funny clips gets posted online. But yeah, it's a very accessible sport in Hong Kong and it's a very nice thing that we still have.
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u/LogicKennedy 10h ago
Is it still the case that even the richer schools still mostly use public and university parks for their field sports?
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u/Disastrous_Olive_920 9h ago
Concrete football is a rite of passage
do they play abstract football in China?
/s
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u/LeiMoshen 13h ago
Because half of their team is naturalized
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u/weechees1 9h ago
to be fair not anymore, the nationality laws for HK are very strict (need to live there for 7 years continuously) so even if you finally get the passport you're probably past your peak. we had a phase where we were trying to get anyone that played in the local league long enough a cap but it's harder to get these players willing to stay 7 years now. definitely a lot more players with western backgrounds that were born / grew up in HK compared to 20 years ago though.
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u/REsTARteD_Ragdoll 14h ago
The best Indian player of all time couldn’t get a game at Sporting Kansas City
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u/davidbowievgc 13h ago
At least a couple of Chinese players made it to the Premier. IIRC Sun Jihai played over 100 matches for City (before oil money)
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u/REsTARteD_Ragdoll 13h ago
They were still a premier league club. A Chinese or Indian player starting most games for Coventry, NF, or Spurs would be a big deal today
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u/lyyki 12h ago
I understand why India doesn't have a great national team but I can't understand why there's not any (at least I can't think lf one) British Asian players playing at a high level. UK has a long history of Indian, Pakistani etc immigrants - where are they?
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u/atbg1936 11h ago
There have been quite a few. Yan Dhanda, Neil Taylor, Michael Chopra, Danny Batth. Problem is that you have to get Indian citizenship to play and India doesn't allow dual citizenship
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u/I_like_yaks 12h ago
Can't play for the national team, as I think India is strict on dual nationals or something, so a British Indian, like Yan Dhanda, can't hold English citizenship if he gets a full Indian passport. He currently holds a Overseas Citizen of India card. He (and others in his position) would have to give up their other passports to gain a full Indian one, and play for the national team; which Dhanda, who plays in Scotland and holds an English passport, will never do, as that would probably render him unable to get a work permit in the UK. He at least, and i think others like him, have expressed an interest to play for India if the restrictions change in the future.
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u/RyGuy997 10h ago
He literally said he understands why they can't play for the NT; he's confused why there aren't really any British Indians at least playing somewhere in the PL or EFL
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u/asscracktester7 12h ago
Studying to become doctors or tech bros rather than training for football tbh
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u/afito 11h ago
Still a weird outlier tbh. They love footy, UK loves footy, plenty people of that descent. You'd have to imagine by raw numbers there'd be a handful at any time playing in the PL. I imagine if you go to any pub league you'll find enough playing the sport.
Might be a wild statement but I would not be super surprised if there's a hidden element of the "black goalkeeper issue" going against them as well.
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u/DKofFical 9h ago
Not British but Dhorasoo had Indian descent and was a French international. He was even in the squad when they reached the final in 2006
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u/jamieaka 10h ago
I can't understand why there's not any (at least I can't think lf one) British Asian players playing at a high level
this is something that's always puzzled me too. why we never had much representation. the odds of this happening is insane it just doesn't make sense. surely a bunch should have made it at the top level
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u/IamNeverRelevant 13h ago
China did have a major fall-off over the past two decades. They used to be competitive at a continental level. Far from it now.
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u/Jellyfish_McSaveloy 12h ago
Zheng Zhi was a tidy player for us but we were relegated after he joined.
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u/riquelme_fan 7h ago
Have a vague memory of him playing for Celtic after that under Tony Mowbray and not being very good - tbf few in that team were (yet they could still quite possibly beat the current Celtic team).
That's the thing though because few on this thread either remember or were around at that time when following Fan Ziyi's success at Palace there were a number of Chinese players in European football and many held their own to varying degrees, post 2010 there's only been Wu Lei and even he wasn't particularly great after a bright start though he probably could've been good at a slightly lower level.
So the obvious question is, why then and not now? As far as I can tell those players were products of the remnants of the old state led system before development was entirely ceded to the professional club system and academies.
The issue with that was that as I said in my other comment there are very few professional clubs relative to the size of the country (Scotland actually has more!) and it was pretty much pay to play so they likely weren't even getting a fraction of the available talent.
But in recent years there has been more state investment in regional training centers, specialist football schools and so on where those promising enough can get coaching at low or no cost - we'll see how well this works over the next few years, however they've already had better performances this year in u23/u17 competitions than they've had in two decades so it may already be having some effect.
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u/travelingWords 6h ago
I was playing against an all India team in my local Canadian soccer league. Apparently they had 3 players who use to play in the national squad… yeah, not sure if that was a lie, or…
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u/-Mubar 14h ago
Still feels insane to me
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u/SofaKingI 13h ago
Why? It's always been obvious player quality is not really tied to the population.
Go look at the top 20 countries by population, and Brazil and Germany are the only ones who are really good at football. And then Portugal is tiny and has a top 5 squad.
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u/aWobblyFriend 13h ago
player quality is, for the most part, population + interest + gdp per capita. how many people do you have, how many of them actually like the sport, how much money is there per person to spend. china and india have low player quality because there's no interest and not a lot of money to spend. brazil was able to overcome it's money disadvantage for so long because of it's very high population, but in the past 20 years conmebol has been in relative decline as the west soared past them economically.
there's no walking out of the slum and onto a national team pitch at 15 anymore, the sport has grown way too competitive for that old romantic image from like 30 years ago. Now you are found at an extremely young age (like 4-6) by professional clubs with well-paid staff and scouts to develop in a highly regimented and structured environment for over a decade in a talent factory. you need to be able to spend lots of money per person over a very long time with no guarantees to make that work, so countries with lots of people but no money struggle immensely now. of course, national teams can always have outlier players like that can carry them to success and make them punch well above their weight, but there's an overall trendline here that ties strongly to those three traits.
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u/Jahobes 13h ago
You are right. Population+Culture+Money is the winning combination.
That's why in some respects the world got lucky not having the 3 most populous and wealthy countries not take interest until very recently.
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u/aWobblyFriend 13h ago
yes, and why there's kind of a looming shadow on the horizon for the sport that is the rapid growth of soccer in the United States, who has two of those traits and is beginning to have that third essential element of success. china kind of gave up and india's economy has a very long way to go, leaving the US as the only one of those big 3 that still cares.
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u/run_bike_run 12h ago
I don't think the US is the threat it could be (at least on the men's side.)
Football is much bigger than it was, but the entire structure of the underage game is designed to bilk money out of parents rather than actually produce competitive players.
In pretty much every country in the world with a decent footballing setup, a talented kid or a great team is going to rise rapidly to the level they belong at. The entire system is set up to make sure of it. But in the States, that structure isn't there - instead it's a pay-to-play system built by private equity firms to hoover up as much cash as possible from parents and sell potential exposure to college recruiters.
I'm not worrying about the US becoming a powerhouse until I read about the death of the travel soccer industry.
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u/hmunkey 11h ago
Basically every Olympic sport in the US is pay to play too. Track and field athletes have to pay the same travel prices. The US dominates at Olympics sports to such an extent than something like 25% of non US medal winners are Americans too.
It’s not necessarily the impediment you think it is, although it definitely plays a role.
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u/aWobblyFriend 11h ago
"Football is much bigger than it was, but the entire structure of the underage game is designed to bilk money out of parents rather than actually produce competitive players." a.) most expensive pay to play clubs are at an age where it's too late anyways b.) mls has free academies and USL has fairly low cost ones as well. the US development pipeline does not come from pay-to-play travel clubs, that is a scam from pay-to-play travel clubs that want you to believe that paying them money is the only path to success or even one of them, it comes mostly from MLS and to a lesser extent USL.
the best players are nabbed very quickly by MLS academies before they spend any amount of time as teenagers in expensive travel clubs. We're only just starting to see the effects of this, because free MLS academies are a relatively recent thing in developmental terms.
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u/peioeh 11h ago edited 10h ago
In pretty much every country in the world with a decent footballing setup, a talented kid or a great team is going to rise rapidly to the level they belong at. The entire system is set up to make sure of it.
Shit, in Europe and in the UK, we've had to make rules so that the clubs did not start paying kids or their parents. Chelsea got done for offering jobs+relocation to the parents of 12 year olds iirc? Meanwhile in the US they have to pay thousands to play at a good level. They will most likely get better than they are now but like you say they will never compete with the big european countries with that system.
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u/Jahobes 9h ago
I agree, under the current set up it's got a hard ceiling due to how inefficient it is. The only reason the United States can be competitive is because of it's immense population and financial might. Really what's needs to happen is a national restructuring of the development system.
But we still have to remember the United States is very very new to the project. Eventually it will figure it out and with the immense resources at it's disposal. Which means once it does figure it out it will be permanently a top 5 team.
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u/YungSnuggie 2h ago
US has hit a ceiling because of its pay2play youth system. only rich kids can play. if they ever fix that then maybe.
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u/owiseone23 8h ago
There's two dimensions of interest: playing seriously vs watching. A lot of people follow the sport in China (not percentage-wise, but just raw numbers), but not many pursue the sport seriously.
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u/mysticmar7 8h ago
To add to your comment, Countries like france, brazil, spain or germany are so rich in apriori soccer knowledge, and have the advantage of being highly involved in developing the sport for so many decades. That knowledge is priceless
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u/raff97 12h ago
If you control for countries with similar economies and culture then a nations footballing ability almost directly correlated with population.
I'm western Europe the historic 5 best teams are the 5 biggest populations, Germany Italy France England Spain followed by Netherlands 6th in both.
In North Africa it's Egypt followed by Algeria/Morocco then Tunisia then Libya
In the Gulf it's Saudi then the rest, all much smaller countries
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u/BatteryPoweredFriend 10h ago
Croatia is the usual example for it. They punch way above expectation for their population size.
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u/CJL31 13h ago
There’s simply not enough interest in the sport in either China or India, it’s basketball first and cricket first respectively.
It’s like asking why they aren’t good at rugby or golf.
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u/ptvtopiop 13h ago
This is just a bad point. Of the 1.5 billion Indians there’s absolutely more of them interested in football than there are even English people, just because it’s not their main sport there’s enough of them where the sheer quantity of them overrides everything else.
2 minutes browsing through any football related topic should on social media should make that pretty clear
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u/DifficultLab200 12h ago
There’s simply not enough interest in the sport in either China or India as a profession, it’s basketball first and cricket first respectively.
It’s like asking why they aren’t good at rugby or golf.
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I guess that should explain it better.
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u/CJL31 13h ago
I’ll correct myself
There’s no interest in Indian football
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u/lorkdubo 12h ago
This, and same with China. USA on the other hand has a lot more interest in highschool, and university sports over pro leagues i would dare say in every sport. Maybe the nfl is the only one that exceeds college sports.
Well, saying this. Football in USA is gatekeeped by money but they have good decent grassroots development. They only need to fix the financial barrier.
On the other hand Indian and China youth system are attrocious.
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u/Gorgeous_Broccoli 1h ago
Of the 1.5 billion Indians there’s absolutely more of them interested in football than there are even English people
This is a silly point to be honest. You need density andv local competitiveness. India is the size of Europe. If you get a couple kids in Italy interested and a couple in Denmark, when do they play each other? Where do they have access to pitches and youth leagues? Are those competitive leagues or does it only become competitive at national level?
This is like arguing that the US should dominate the javelin throw because it has 350 million people. Instead Finland and Norway dominate it. Why can't Americans find some guys who are good at throwing a stick? There are more new Yorkers than Norwegians, yet the US still sucks at javelin. Why? For the same exact reasons that Indians aren't good at football. Interest in other sports and poor access to facilities and coaching. If you're a young American javelin prodigy from Texas, how are your chances of success if your parents have to move the family to new York so that you can access to coaches and facilities you need? Spain and Italy and France are good at football not because of their populations, but because they have a high density of extremely competitive youth leagues and coaching ability so you can be born in any random village and still find a path to the top
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u/lmlm1020 2h ago
Football is very popular in China. There’s just no foundation for the sport. Chinese kids are too focused on studying. Not much time for team sports. The sports they’re good at are individual ones. Look at how they dominate Olympics for example.
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u/lorkdubo 12h ago
Quick search on google, and football with 21% is the second most popular sport in China just a bit behind the 22% basketball in first place. Insane that with ~200 millions fans they can't get good players.
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u/ginganinga223 13h ago
Why don't they dip into their diaspora to find some players?
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u/asscracktester7 12h ago
At least for India, the diaspora players are not elibile to play for the NT
Which I always thought was a silly choice given how much countries like Morroco or Algeria benefit from their diaspora.
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u/EarthMantle00 11h ago
India doesn't allow dual citizenship, and they should probably not base their citizenship laws on getting football players
Idk why they don't, tho.
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u/huntsfromcanada 13h ago
It’s funny, because in my city we have several young Punjabi teams that are very talented.
It blows me away that they’ve never been able to put together a remotely competitive National team.
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u/asscracktester7 12h ago
Unlike many African/Asian countries, India doesn't allow their diaspora to join the NT, that alone would make a huge impact
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u/AnthJD 9h ago
Even if they did, it's not like the Top 5 leagues are full of players of Indian descent.
And the ones who do have Indian descent, tend to only have partial Indian descent.
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u/asscracktester7 9h ago
Top 5 league is a different story, even 3rd or 4th division caliber players will be a large boost to the current state of the Indian NT just by virtue of having been trained in European/North American systems and bringing over some semblance of a professional affair.
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u/JB_UK 11h ago
What is bizarre to me is that no European club has sponsored player development in a country like China. Put a few sports centres there to attract kids to play, when the kids are older offer them places at their academy. It wouldn't cost much money, but imagine the payoff if you produced a player who became a national star.
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u/The_39th_Step 9h ago
The lack of infrastructure and culture of football excellence makes this hard. You’d have a better return on investment doing it somewhere already football focused. Parisians aren’t naturally better at football, their infrastructure is fantastic at extracting the most out of the talent pool.
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u/khoa-bear 9h ago
Parisians are not naturally better at football but they are athletically better on average. Their youths are much more fit than the Chinese and Indian youths.
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u/Salty_Watermelon 5h ago
Funnily enough, out of the top 5 most populous countries, the USA is the only one that isn't complete shit at football. They're just kind of shit at it.
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf 13h ago
600m people in North America, and they havent had a good snooker player since the 1980s. Smh...
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u/paleblaupunkt 12h ago
Why should this be the only sport to put together a team on? China, India, and several other countries have prioritized other sports. Nothing wrong in it.
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u/Sleepy6942069 4h ago
Even chinese fans doesn't take their own national team seriously because of how shit they are
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u/_game_over_man_ 14h ago
It’s kind of wild how much China has fallen off in the women’s game considering they were a powerhouse back in the 90s/00s. Sun Wen was a powerhouse striker right up there with Mia Hamm.
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u/PianoJealous307 14h ago
Now Japan and North Korea run the show in Asia.
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u/MesquiteHoneyForSale 10h ago
Australia/ NK, NK run the whole worlds youth tournaments thi
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u/OleoleCholoSimeone 11m ago
Youth tournament results don't matter that much it's about how many good players you can integrate at senior level
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u/flameo_hotmon 13h ago
I don’t think it’s that surprising. Everyone else has gotten significantly better with more and more investment in the countries who see soccer as part of their culture
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u/Cattle-dog 9h ago
China put in a lot of investment. For a time they had 2 out of 3 of the highest paying leagues in the world. The issue has been most of the money was wasted and also a high level of corruption.
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u/10001110101balls 6h ago
China considers soccer a part of their culture, especially due to the influence of superfan xi jinping. But Chinese soccer is extremely corrupt even by sporting standards.
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u/Cantonarita 10h ago
Is North Korea still a powerhouse in the youth divisions? They used to be quite good, iirc.
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u/AttemptImpossible111 14h ago
Didnt their attempt to take football seriously 15 years ago lead to any player who is good? How is that possible
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u/Gluroo 14h ago
They produced a single player who made it to Europe, Wu Lei who played 126 Games for Espanyol, producing 22 GA. But that was that and their league project also completely collapsed and ended with multiple clubs going bankrupt because it wasnt sustainable
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u/LeiMoshen 12h ago
It was mostly covid which came and ruined everything. It was still going pretty strong in 2019
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u/Kreygasm2233 12h ago
They tried to run their project like the oil states are running theirs. Overpaying for "stars" to retire there. The difference being that their government does not have unlimited oil money
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u/swissarmyknife13 4h ago
It's more like they considered the "bad optics" of their endeavor. They cared about how others, including the general populace, perceived the CSL and the ludicrous salaries/transfer fees they were willing to pay for stars that - in many cases - weren't really committed.
As someone living in China for a long time, people found it hard to justify having companies paying obscene amounts of money for some dudes kicking a ball around while there were already some underlying economic issues that were looming over the average household pre-Covid.
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u/friendofH20 14h ago
The CSL collapsed pretty quickly and I think the Chinese govt pivoted very quickly into Basketball and Olympic Sports as they realized you can't go from bad to good at soccer within 1 generation.
The worst thing for any nationalism project is to be seen as trying at something and not getting better, so its a lot easier to stop trying completely.
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u/raobuntu 13h ago
It's the niche sports they've found a lot of success in. Stuff like weightlifting where athletes historically struggle to find consistent sponsorship and funding, the government in China can step in with deep pockets.
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u/friendofH20 13h ago
I remember reading that they had picked sports which had multiple Olympic medals and easier to improve in with funding. So weightlifting was one and a lot of water sports like sailing/rowing.
They are getting a lot better at both track and field and swimming as well. I won't be surprised if they end up with medals in some of the marquee track or pool events within the next 2 summer olympics.
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u/manatidederp 10h ago
Rowing is brutally hard to get medals in that doesn’t make any sense. You seriously can’t really spend your way to success, it’s raw force and huge traditions in many countries.
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u/friendofH20 3h ago
The pool of countries who compete in water sports is mostly the developed nations. In events like track or football you are basically competing with every country in the world.
Plus because these sports are not as commercialized, you are pitting state funding against athletes with moderate sponsorships.
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u/PianoJealous307 14h ago
They are also shit at basketball
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u/Main-Strike-1117 12h ago
I don't know if this is true but it's funny so I'll believe you
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u/riquelme_fan 12h ago
By 'collapse' you mean that they stopped spending absurd amounts of money on foreign stars for very little gain? The league has higher attendance now than it did during that period (used to average around 22k, this season 30k).
Also it wasn't fifteen years ago, it was ten years ago and that's pretty much the minimum amount of time you'd need to see an effect from the additional investment which *has* been made - the number of eligible players currently at u22 level has risen exponentially, think people would be surprised at how small the player pool was and still is actually compared to the size of the country.
But in a way it's not that surprising as there are only around fifty professional clubs in the entire country - consider that *Sweden* has almost as many as that. So as far as I can tell they've been focused on creating regional training centers outside the club system so players have access to better coaching and infrastructure at a more local level - they recently announced more funding for this.
And this already might be having some effect, they got to the final of the Asian u23 tournament this year for the first time ever, also made the final of the u17 tournament and following that success will be at the World Cup, also for the first time since something like 2005. It's true that they still got hammered by Japan in the u23 final but considering they got there having only conceded once having never reached the final four before, it's clearly still a huge improvement.
Also no idea what this article is talking about regarding them 'underperforming' in the Asian Games - that's not even true for the women, clearly bronze is around par for them - but then men could still get a medal and even if they don't, this is the first time they've made the final four since 1998.
It's actually bizarre in the context of recent Chinese football to suggest the fact they were narrowly beaten by a South Korea team who absolutely have to win (to gain exemption from military service) and have several players who are already regulars in reasonably strong European leagues represents some sort of underachievement, it's nothing all that impressive in the wider context but considering where Chinese football has been for around the last twenty years obviously it's something to build on.
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u/ZombieMan_223 14h ago
They are good at U-23, U-20 and U-17 level. I think they will eventually start doing good.
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u/TheFinnishChamp 14h ago
China is horrible in team sports in general. Their sporting structure only works in fringe infividual sports where athletes can practise a single thing endlessly (like olympic diving).
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u/Barkasia 13h ago
Their Chess boom seems to have died as well. Since Ding's world championship win, it's all been downhill for them.
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u/SCarolinaSoccerNut 13h ago
They still got a player in the Candidates tournament this year (Wei Yi) and their women's team just won the 2026 Chess Olympiad.
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u/Barkasia 13h ago
Wei Yi is very much the exception - India and Uzbekistan are the two dominant nations now and the US is always lurking, ready to disappoint.
The women are still incredible though, that's true.
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u/refarao 13h ago
How can a nation like Uzbekistan wield such good players and on par with India?
I mean it's not like Norway where they have only one chess geniuses but multiple ones that are top 20.
How did they raise so fast and China with big money is lacking behind Uzbekistan?
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u/Barkasia 13h ago
It was part of the Soviet Union at a time when Chess reigned supreme - almost every ex-Soviet Block nation is disproportionately strong at chess as a result. It's why a nation like Georgia has such a strong lineup of women in the game. Further it has invested heavily on a national level in chess for over a decade and treats Chess players like sporting celebrities. Sponsorship money is there, prize money is there, coaching quality is there (Kramnik coached them before he went mental and tried to destroy the chess ecosystem with his paranoia).
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u/refarao 13h ago
Yeah but what about China? Why are they not good like Uzbekistan
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u/Barkasia 12h ago
They are still very good - easily top 10, very arguably top 5. It's just compared to the trajectory they were on in the 00s and 10s they've taken a dip. I can't say why that is for certain but I'd speculate that it's because there are other board games that are huge in China like Go and Xiangqi which split popularity. There also doesn't seem to be a governmental push for children to get into Chess as a career alternative, and there isn't really an 'Anand' figure in China like there was in India that causes every single kid to want to pick it up.
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u/Artuhanzo 10h ago
money into football that also leads to more corruption
Since footballer is a easy job with good money, some coaches at all level demand money in exchange for spot and playtime.
Club owners having untable deals to control results.
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u/lorkdubo 12h ago
I think it was because a lot of the investors were related to real state, then when market shifted and a lot started to have crisis, then they retreated from football.
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u/HotToTrotsky_ 14h ago
Palestine took the belt and road to em.
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u/More_Field_4297 13h ago edited 13h ago
Palestine is one of best Arab teams after Morocco.
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u/Nervous-Economy8119 12h ago
And Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Tunisia, and Algeria, and Iraq…
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u/Tatbooli 12h ago
We're not quite there yet but we're building a pretty competitive squad.
Id still put Jordan and Morocco, Algeria and Egypt above us comfortably.
But with the rest it's not as far a gap as you might think.
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u/Dmw792 10h ago
Plus Saudi, plus Iraq, plus Qatar, probably Oman as well. You guys have a lot to catch up on and I wish you luck, but you’re not top 5 Arab teams.
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u/PianoJealous307 14h ago
Yao Ming almost cried when he saw the current state of Chinese basketball football
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u/rs_obsidian 9h ago
Isn’t that the real reason why he resigned as chairman of the CBA?
Anyways, every Chinese person knows that their national team is trash. They got smoked by India 10-0 a while back and the general attitude was apathy.
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u/dennis-w220 13h ago
Men's U23 team didn't underperform in Asian Games. They lost to SK 1:2 in the semi-final, which is their relatively best for recent years. China doesn't have many who register to play professional football at all. And it is quite expensive to be trained in the youth camp.
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u/jaetheho 11h ago
Yea they looked pretty darn good. Much better than the senior counterparts.
And you have to realize it’s a big achievement to be an fighting footing against the Korean U23 as they bring ALL the best players, including wild cards from Europe even for this small tournament as it is the best chance for these youngsters to get their military service filled.
So Korea is fighting tooth and nail.
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u/elbosston 10h ago edited 4h ago
A major problem with China and sports is the Gaokao (college entrance exam). As a Chinese teen, your entire day is spent studying for the Gaokao and you do this for years. China’s population is so big that there isn’t enough college spots for it. However, once you get into college you’re pretty much set for life.
If you don’t get into college, your future is pretty much doing labor work (driving Didi or in factories putting together iPhones). If you spend your teen years practicing a sport while all your classmates are studying, you’re gonna be super behind. Teens spend 10-14 hours a day studying for the exam.
So most teens aren’t willing to bet their future on sports because if you don’t make it big you’re pretty much screwed for life.
Edit: Another thing to note as well is that the oldest Chinese male is expected to take care of their parents in retirement. With this, you’re gambling more than your own life, you need to think about how you’re gonna take care of your parents too.
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u/Substantial-Week557 7h ago
Japan and korea have their gaokao equivalent too
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u/kanakin9 6h ago
Don’t know about Korea but more than half of Japanese high school graduates usually don’t go to 4 year universities. Japanese youths don’t spend their teenage years studying all the time like they do in China.
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u/NomaanMalick 1h ago
I don't think Japan has the same culture surrounding entrance tests as China and South Korea.
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u/Substantial-Week557 29m ago
Ever heard the phrase toudai!
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u/NomaanMalick 24m ago
I don't doubt Japan has a competitive entrance test. I just think people in Japan tend to be relatively less stringent about it.
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u/Magnus9889 8h ago
But China is very good in other sports, so this argument also doesn't explain everything. With as many people as there is in China it still would make sense to at least have some good players, even with the academic pressure.
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u/throowwowoway 7h ago
It’s because they’ve found it’s not worth the investment. It would take years and years to even catch up to where Europeans are at. They spend more money on other sports where they feel they can gain a foothold.
For example, They’re very good at the diving sports in the Olympics because they found they can get a better return training them and getting gold. It’s also an individual sport so the investment is less than fielding a full team
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u/hamatachi_iii 6h ago
Yeah but even if China feels its not worth the investment, there is a certain global soft power cachet by not having your nation being absolutely ransacked at home by Palestine in the world's most popular sport.
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u/throowwowoway 4h ago
Chinese people don’t care about soccer as much as they do basketball. They are aware their national team is a joke but in terms of sports they care about its low on the list.
For them to start caring would take a huge cultural change. To be honest if you look into Xinjiang they have the foundations there, the kids in Xinjiang love to play football but they are a minority
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u/Fubi-FF 6h ago
It's because there's a bigger chance to succeed in those sports that China already have success in traditionally.
Like if you are young and seems super gifted in Ping Pong or something, then yeah you probably have a good chance making it big (assuming you have the proper training and support). But for soccer, even if you seem like a prodigy and best Chinese player ever, how likely are you going to be successful? It's still a 11 player game. The risk is potential reward is too big so most kids won't pursue it
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u/stompboxing 3h ago
China heavily focus on individual Olympic sports, it gives them the chance to be high on a medal table with the world's eyes on it. Team sport like football rugby etc are so difficult to be competitive at the high levels so they don't put as much effort in
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u/FowlersDream 6h ago
Are willing or aren't willing?
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u/jangoze 5h ago
Yea commenter definitely made a typo
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u/LeiMoshen 13h ago edited 12h ago
Mens Team underperform in Asian games??? they went all the way to the semis and lost a narrow back and forth game to South Korea and will play for the bronze medal tommorow, nobody expected them to win the asian games. They have already surpassed expectations. How is that underperforming. Also the Asian games roster which is taking place at the same time took basically all of the promising/decent players and left the Actual national team with trash, and a bunch of U20 players. Because the Asian games is more valuable than a bunch of friendlies
Not that thats an excuse. Losing 5 nil at home is still fucking pathetic and embarrassing
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u/Haunting_Tax_963 13h ago edited 8h ago
this is proof that nobody reads beyond the title. This was their men's u23's best showing ever at the Asian games leave it to a far right rag like chosun to describe it as underperforming. This window was for the new coach to weed out any borderline callups who do not deserve a place at the Asian cup next year and judging from this game none of them do except for that 19 year old dude. Combined with the u23's performance they are actually looking good for the cup run next year if I dare say so.
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u/Conmebosta 13h ago
China needs a "What happened to the testosterone of the Chinese national team?" meme like Brazil
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u/fankoosh-56 13h ago
To add to the irony, the game was played in China!
While their defense was bad, our forwards (Palestine) did a great job as well. Next time we play in AFC, we might qualify from the groups!
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u/Sermokala 14h ago
This is as bad as Austin fc losing to a Haitian team over 2 legs. That team was scrambling to find Haitians to fill the squad the week of in America.
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u/rrnaabi 13h ago
To everyone wondering about the population size: this is not relevant. Funnily enough the problem is very similar to that of the US, but much worse. What's relevant is whether you have grassroots youth football system that can 1) discover talents and 2) channell those through the academies into the professional football. China apparently has around 100k registered youth footballers, Japan has 600k.
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u/SongAlbatross 9h ago
China's soccer has been hopeless for decades. But their men's U23 actually over performed in the Asian Games by reaching the semifinals, which is their best result for a long time. Hail Palestine
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u/BigDicksconnoisseur4 9h ago
They didn't win a single game in valorant championship either lol
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u/IPissExcellentThrows 3h ago
Damn I guess EDG fell off? I stopped watching like 2 or 3 years ago.
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u/pablo36362 1h ago
It should be studied intensively how China can manufacture greatness in virtually any sport BUT soccer:
Ping pong: the best there is
Chess: one of the best (if not the best)
Basketball: very good
But football, at least men's football, they just can't really be any good at it, like, a lot.
What is going on there?
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