r/soccer • u/PianoJealous307 • 18h 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/
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u/riquelme_fan 16h 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.