The World Cup has caught the interest of many Chinese people. If China actually qualified then interest would be even more huge. The Chinese men's national football team is also known as the national pig, a play on words and a fairly accurate description of what Chinese football fans think of their team. The national team is one of the few things to do with China that Chinese people will openly criticise and joke about. "1.4 billion people and we still can't find 11 decent football players" is a line I've heard many times already. It's particularly hard to take, as their 'poor' North Korean neighbours managed to qualify. At least there's a Chinese company with their advertising billboards around the pitches (China Solar), whose Chinese characters among all the Latin letters have caught a few people's eye.
There may be three reasons why Chinese football is rubbish. One is corruption. A colleague asked me before how common it was for national coaches in England to accept bribes to pick players even if they're not good enough. The Chinese FA is rife with corruption, so progress is difficult. Secondly, the national government perhaps doesn't focus as much on football as other sports, particularly Olympic sports. If the Party demanded a decent football team, they could probably knock one up. Thirdly, there's a Chinese phrase "one person on his own is a dragon, 10,000 people together becomes insects". They seem to be better at individual sports than team sports.
The Chinese only like the most famous teams. The idea of supporting underdogs is unheard of. They want big matches with lots of goals scored by famous people, like the players who feature on the adverts during half time. Messi appears in an advert for QQ (the ubiquitous instant messaging service). Argentina are possibly the most liked, but England, Germany, Brazil, Netherlands and Spain are popular as well. No one seems to care or notice much that the England team is a lot more hype than substance.
For the England-Germany game, most Chinese men were cheering for both teams and clinking glasses whenever something noteworthy happened. The clinking of glasses (sometimes 'ganbei', 'bottoms up') is like the seal of approval: that was good. For one of the earlier group stage games, I was sitting with friends on the Bar Street, a series of bars with TVs and tables outside. Because it was 0-0, the three Chinese guys sitting in front of us were having to scrape the barrel to find excuses to drink. After a few small beers, they started doing it with water. The girl with them was either asleep or texting for the whole game. Still, they probably got some face by sitting at the same bar as some white foreigners.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
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