Humorous, drastic and ridiculous ways to improve the Chinese National Team

[sunshine gasolineMember]

It’s baffling isn’t it?

To think that my beloved home country with her population of 1.2 billion people  (which after some quick math, that’s still more than twice the population of every country that’s ever won a world cup… combined) can’t seem to find, despite her splendorous riches and swaying girth-y political influence, a group of 11 Chinamen who can kick a stupid ball around as well as Argentinian midgets or balding, potato faced, Liverpudlian chavs.

And before I find myself submerged in self pity while I ponder this great mystery of our time (my own conclusions pinpoint the dastardly culprit simply as my motherland’s troubling shortage of grass), I’m sure, like many of you, in our quiet hours bemoaning this shame that is our brith-right: solutions occur to us. Crazy fantastical solutions.

In this thread, we shall entertain each other by sharing them.

Here is mine:

Guo Zu: A new approach.

Chinese footballing fan-culture greatly outweighs Chinese football playing-culture. It has become obvious that China does not produce quality footballers, only tragically fanatical fans. Once again, I’d like to point out our lack of grass… It seems to me, it would come at great expense and effort to straighten out the byzantine entanglements of our current system.

So, let’s not.

We don’t need a system or a culture that produces quality footballers, we simply need decent footballers.

Here’s what I propose: the Chinese government purchases two European clubs, one top flight, the other lower league. In this experiment, teams from the Dutch league and Belgian league would work best (Due to their lack of EU restrictions on players), for this example let’s just use the Dutch league (I doubt anyone here really follows Belgian football, especially after Cercle Brugge released their one Chinese player this season).

Anyways… we release every player previously at the club, we keep the coaching staff and hire new ones. We build a state of the art training facility and youth school. Then simply buy every marginally talented Chinese player from the CSL/Jia A and make them play at the clubs, in their reserve teams, and youth teams. We would place our best players at the top level league, and our younger, more developing players in the lower league.

As a footnote: Sure we would strip the CSL of all Chinese talent (which would drastically improve the level of play… (hahah)), but so what? The league has already shown worrying signs of turning into an retirement destination for overpaid foreigners. We can simply remove the cap on foreign players and let the owners do what they wanted: flood the league with exciting foreign talent. To be fair, that’s really what the fans want too… to see world class football. I mean… the CSL is full of half empty stadiums, but of course there’s always sell outs when AC Milan or Chelsea go on an Asian tour. Not only would this increase the stature of the league, it would increase the interest in football and local football in all of China.

Anyways… This overcomes the current challenges that face our players… poor coaching, substandard training conditions, the attentions of undesirable  influences, no grass, etc.

And provides many benefits… a new enviorment removed of distractions, the legendary Dutch youth system, weekly competitive matches against quality European opposition. Note that this does not only provide that invaluable top-level match experience that will help our players develop, but also provide something that the fans want, and something that the CNT (Chinese National Team) has been lacking for quite sometime: accountability.

Many times we have no idea where the CNT stand (I mean… we know they suck… just not to what degree), we play our little sequestered CSL games with no real idea how our footballing “stars” stack up against real international competition. And sometimes when we do fail spectacularly we may find it a bit difficult to appropriate blame. Maybe our favorite player had a bad game, poor form, luck, etc.

This would not happen if we run our starting eleven through the rigors of a 34 game Eredivisie season. The true quality and more importantly hearts of our footballers will become apparent and the fact that they play as a team, would not only greatly increase their cohesiveness as a unit during international competition. But also provide transparency in our National Coach’s selection process.

And that, my friends, is the way we shall qualify for the next World Cup.

Now the question begs: How fast would the current Chinese National Team get relegated from the Eredivisie?

[Yiddo HuayiParticipant]

Alternatively:

1. Give every squad member a copy of FIFA 13

2. Shout at them in a Scottish brogue (maybe Cameron can do this).

3. Throw boots at them in the dressing room

4. Avoid pasta – stick to rice (#neverforget)

 

[tomParticipant]

Here is a good place to stay !

[jianghuyixiaoParticipant]

The most clever and most folly, this is we chinses..

[jianghuyixiaoParticipant]

Folly in China is a kind of culture

[jianghuyixiaoParticipant]

We know folk strength is so important in Japan football ,so China football need reform ,besids,football concept should learn from Japan and Germany

[bambang_lhParticipant]

I have been watching China National Football Team and Club since 1994, and I really love them even now they could not qualify even for the last 10 of the world cup Asian qualifying round, happen three times (2006 finished number 2 behind Kuwait, 2010 finished number 4, but defeat Australia on their home 0-1, 2014 finished number 3 after double defeated from Iraq).

But They are still and forever my brothers, that I will proud to the last

Nowadays too many foreigners football players at Chinese super league clubs and mostly strikers/attackers, that makes our Chinese Strikers just sit on a bench to wait as a subs for foreigners striker.
See what Marcello Lippi did to Gao Lin,

See our Top Scorer on CSL, all Top Ten were foreigners striker

the other effect is lack of striker for national team. Our beloved national team forced to play 4-5-1 with only one striker, Gao Lin, that disappointingly only a substitution striker on his club.

Young striker lack experience and opportunity because club look for instant result with foreigners striker

Now We faced with Asian Cup Qualifiers, one group with Saudi and Iraq (again) and loser Indonesia.

Should We struggle just to qualify for a tournament that We usually go to at least semi final, ten until twenty years ago?

If I was in Jakarta when China battle Indonesia on Asian Cup qualifiers, I will come to Gelora Bung Karno Stadium and sing March of The Volunteers for my brothers, and I don’t care what one hundred thousand Indonesian supporter will think about Me.

[True BlueParticipant]

A couple of very enlightening reads related to this topic are ‘Why England Always Lose (And Other Curious Phenomena Explained)’ by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, and ‘Inverting The Pyramid: The History Of Football Tactics’ by Jonathan Wilson.

The former explains in depth the relationship between three important factors that impact on how successful any country’s national football team can be: population size (China – good), GDP per capital (China – not so good) and experience in international football (China – not so good).

It also explains ‘football knowledge networks’ which explain how the world’s best teams are clustered together (Central Europe and South America).

The latter explains the success of those sides outside of these networks that have embraced outside ideas, strategies and mentalities, even if they are entirely alien to the region.

The section on former South Korea, Australia and Russia manager Gus Hiddink is particularly enlightening. It explains through anecdotes, interviews and observations how he single-handedly turned these ‘mediocre’ footballing nations around, guiding two of them (South Korea and Russia) to semi finals of major tournaments (SK World Cup 2002 and Russia Euro 2008), whilst giving Australia their best ever World Cup finish in 2006.

If China can get their hands on someone like him, with a wealth of knowledge of European club and international football, and the economy continues to grow as it has been, and enough resources are allocated, there’s no telling what China can achieve in the future.

Kuper and Szymanski’s book even predicts that Japan and Iraq will become leading footballing nations at international level if they keep progressing as they have been.

Food for thought.

[Author]

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