SPORTS-CHINA: Corruption Ruining Soccer Games

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Nov 19 2004 (IPS) - China’s failure to attain the status of a football superpower is quickly becoming a national scandal and may prompt reforms of a sporting system long dominated by central control and driven by the Communist Party’s exhortations to win sporting glory for the state.

The world’s largest nation failed to secure entry into the 2006 World Cup finals – despite spending billions in a bid to become a mighty football power with world-class players and a quest to be the global best.

The damaging loss Wednesday came despite the Chinese team thrashing Hong Kong 7-0.

The score proved insufficient for China to proceed to the next round as its group rival Kuwait qualified by virtue of having scored one goal more than China.

Having lost already to Kuwait last month, Chinese team needed to win big to overtake the Middle Eastern nation with whom they were tied for the lead of Asia Group Four. Despite the surprising goal-fest against Hong Kong, China fell short as Kuwait delivered a 6-1 defeat of Malaysia the same evening.

”Chinese football killed itself,” ran a headline in the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’. ”Nothing can be worse than that. The Chinese team won by seven goals but still can’t qualify.”

”Early death, early reincarnation!” portended the ‘Beijing News’. But it went on warning that China’s football fans had seen similar ‘die to be reborn’ moments before.

”Let’s not forget that Chinese football had died many times before but we never did manage to see it completely reborn,” the paper said in an editorial.

The defeat is stirring resentment within the Chinese soccer-crazy public. They are incensed with the inept government management, dodgy referees and ubiquitous match fixing.

A flawed ten-year effort to create both a professional league and a national team capable of taking on the best has become a national shame, and is now a flashpoint for broader reforms.

But the country’s passion for football has also seen soccer hooliganism on the rise.

Earlier this year, Chinese fans rioted in Chengdu when the national side lost to Japan in a friendly match, prompting lawmakers to table the country’s first legislation on soccer violence.

Nevertheless, another rowdy affair ensued during the Asian Cup final between Japan and China on Aug. 7, when crowd behaviour slipped out of control. Chinese fans threw bottles, shouted obscenities, burned Japanese flags and pounded a Japanese embassy car when defending champions Japan won the Asian Cup 3-1.

Although anti-Japanese feelings run strong in China, the real reason is the fans’ frustration that football in China, unlike in Japan or South Korea, has failed to develop.

China has sent players like Sun Jihai and Li Tie to gain experience abroad, and has imported over 50 foreign players, as well as some leading foreign coaches – but the national game still remains a mess.

China first participated in World Cup finals two years ago but has since struggled to achieve any significant victories. The national team’s Dutch-born coach Arie Haan will no longer be coaching beyond this week, having been fired after China’s humiliating World Cup exit.

While some newspapers blamed him for the team’s failure, others said the real culprits were the China Football Association (CFA) and the players themselves.

”The CFA, as a manager should be blamed,” said the ‘Beijing Times’. ”Chinese football players earn lots of money but their skills and competence don’t qualify their salary,” added the daily.

China’s professional league is supposed to be run by the CFA but the central government calls the shots in the form of the Football Sport Management Centre of the State General Administration of Sports, which takes the former East German sporting system as its model.

According to an online survey conducted by the ‘Chinese Central Television’, football fans think over half of first division matches in 2003 were rigged and are now boycotting live games in a wave of silent protest.

This January, the CFA tried to make a fresh start by creating a new super league which had just 12 instead of 15 slots. It also incorporated much tighter rules on the pitch and tried to repackage itself with a new image.

But few months later the league descended into a fresh crisis. In October, seven clubs complained that the premier league was plagued with corruption and mismanagement.

They threatened a boycott unless CFA agreed to deal with the ”black whistles”, or bribe-taking referees. They also asked the CFA to make public its balance sheet over the past 10 years in order to clean up the allegations of match fixing.

In the face of such football rebellion, CFA called emergency talks and announced it would cede part of its authority by opening its books and launching a reform process.

But CFA officials only agreed to make public its financial records for 2004 and not for the previous 10 years.

The chairman of CFA, Yan Shiduo, has rejected calls for his resignation and said there would be no relegation from the super league this season. Hoping to defuse the crisis, CFA has set up a commission to look at ways to clean up the game.

”We cannot find any way out if we don’t carry out reform on Chinese football, that seems to be collapsing,” Yan was quoted as saying.

But departing Dutch coach Arie Haan laid part of the blame for China’s World Cup elimination on recent scandals tarring the country’s top professional league.

”Of course, it has had an influence on the national team and the players,” Haan told the ‘Chinese Central Television’. He said resentment about salaries and referees on-the-take was rife among Chinese footballers.

The saga of football revolt in the scandal-plagued professional league has had an ample resonance in the country where government corruption is widespread but the media is censored from reporting it.

The threat of a boycott has been a shocking affront to the all-powerful, Communist Party-backed CFA, and may herald bigger changes in the way the Chinese sporting machine is run.