Title: 'Numb' and 'humiliated': Why China's football dream lies in tatters

On that muggy Thursday night in Saitama, as the Chinese national football team suffered a humiliating defeat, Chinese football reached a historic low. Facing a 6-0 lead by Japan, the Chinese defenders likely only wished for the final whistle to arrive sooner, ending the torment. They hoped to escape the nightmare as quickly as possible.

However, Japan's Takefusa Kubo showed no mercy. After his teammates toyed with their opponents for a while, he received a pass on the edge of the Chinese penalty area and unleashed a powerful shot into the net, securing Japan's seventh goal. This player, hailed as the "Japanese Messi," cemented China's place in the history books with their most painful loss in World Cup qualifying history, a truly unforgettable and unfortunate event.

The 0-7 thrashing in September 2023 was described as "rock bottom" by a Shanghai newspaper. In the year prior, the Chinese team had already suffered a string of humiliating defeats, including losses to Oman, Uzbekistan, and Hong Kong. However, even worse was yet to come, highlighting the team's struggles.

A week later, dozens of players, coaches, and managers were arrested for gambling, match-fixing, and bribery as part of a two-year domestic football corruption investigation. And the team's losses continued. In Hangzhou, Australia defeated China 2-0, solidifying China's position at the bottom of their World Cup qualifying group, further deepening the crisis.

Once upon a time, China dreamed of becoming a football powerhouse. With the world's largest population, a booming economy, and a determined Communist Party led by an avid football fan, President Xi Jinping, everything seemed promising. However, the path to developing Chinese football has proven to be anything but smooth, with numerous obstacles along the way.

After taking office in 2012, Xi Jinping's passion for football fueled a campaign to reform and improve Chinese football. He once stated that his dreams were for China to qualify for the World Cup, host the World Cup, and ultimately win the World Cup. These were his "three wishes." Yet, a decade later, even Xi seemed to have lost faith. During an international summit in 2023, he remarked to the Thai Prime Minister in a casual conversation that China's recent victory over Thailand was "pure luck," showing his diminished optimism.

"When the Chinese government decides it wants to do something, it rarely fails," said Mark Dreyer, a Beijing-based sports writer. "Look at electric vehicles, look at the Olympics. Almost any field you can think of, China is right up there." But football seems unable to flourish under the Communist Party's control, presenting a unique challenge.

A key 2015 government report stated that the Chinese Football Association must have "legal autonomy" and should be "independent of" the General Administration of Sport. Even Xi Jinping acknowledged that if China wanted to succeed, the Party would have to do something it rarely does: let go. However, Beijing has not relinquished control, hindering progress.

Rowan Simons, author of "Bamboo Goalposts: One Man's Quest to Teach the People's Republic of China to Love Football," told the BBC: "The failure of Chinese football has become a national shame, and figuring out why has become a national obsession. But in my view, the reasons are very clear, and they tell you a lot about how the country works." The situation reflects broader systemic issues.

He and others argue that the problem lies in China's one-party system imposing decisions from the top down. While this has been effective for economic growth, it produces poor results in competitive team sports. Despite FIFA's ban on national interference, the Chinese football scene is rife with political appointments. This is common in China, as the Party controls all aspects of public life, stifling independent growth.

The current president of the Chinese Football Association, Song Kai, is also a deputy secretary of the Communist Party. His work, in turn, is overseen by a senior government official at the General Administration of Sport. "Everything has to be reported up to senior Communist Party leaders. This basically means people who don't understand football are making football decisions," Dreyer said. "Football has to be driven from the grassroots. You start at the bottom of the pyramid, and talent starts to aggregate upwards." This hierarchical structure impedes effective decision-making.

All major footballing nations have a "pyramid" league system. Top professional clubs sit at the apex, supported by a vast base of semi-professional and amateur teams, all with players striving to move up. The flourishing of such a pyramid depends on a culture of mass participation and enjoyment of football. The more players available for selection, the higher the level of the top players, creating a sustainable pipeline of talent.

"If you look at every country where football has really succeeded, the sport has grown organically as a grassroots activity for the last 100 years," Simons said. "The continued failure of Chinese professional football is because it doesn't have any foundations – their pyramid is upside down," highlighting the lack of organic development.

Statistics confirm this: England's 1.3 million registered players far exceed China's fewer than 100,000 footballers, despite China having 20 times the population of England. "Kids here aren't growing up with a ball at their feet. Without that, you're not going to develop top talent," Dreyer said, emphasizing the importance of early engagement with the sport.

The origins of top-level football in Europe and South America can be traced back to the streets and parks of every town and village. In China, however, the push for football development started in Beijing. It wasn't until the 1990s that the government established China's first professional league. It created some top clubs in major cities but neglected the grassroots, leading to an unbalanced system.

Dreyer explains that in this top-down system, officials inevitably adopt a "short-termist" approach to impress their superiors, sacrificing genuine long-term progress for quick fixes. Some foreigners who have played in China say that this tightly controlled system also leaves young players with little room to develop a natural understanding of the game, hindering their growth.

A European player currently playing in China, who wished to remain anonymous, told the BBC that while many Chinese players are "technically good," they lack "football IQ" in crucial moments on the pitch. "Creativity and basic decision-making, things we learn instinctively from a young age, you don't see so much of here," the player said, pointing to the deficiencies in intuitive gameplay.

This doesn't mean there isn't a deep love for football in China. While the men's national team, currently ranked 90th in the world, is seen as a constant disappointment, the women's team, ranked 17th, has been a source of pride for many years. Many Chinese call them the "real" national team, and in 2023, a record 53 million people watched them lose 1-6 to England at the World Cup, demonstrating their enduring popularity.

The Chinese Super League (CSL) boasts some of the highest average attendances of any league in Asia. In its heyday in the 2010s, it attracted many big-name foreign players, fueled by a wave of investment from state-owned enterprises and boosted by a booming economy. However, this was just a fleeting moment, proving unsustainable in the long run.

Since the pandemic and the subsequent slowdown in China's economy, more than 40 professional clubs have collapsed as state-backed companies began to withdraw their investments. Private companies have also proven fickle in their commitments. In 2015, Suning Appliance Group, which once owned Italian top-flight club Inter Milan, acquired Jiangsu Suning Football Club. The club won the CSL title in 2020. But months later, Suning said they would shut down the club to focus on their retail business, highlighting the instability of the league.

The downfall of China's most successful team, Guangzhou Evergrande, is another example. Led by Italian coaches Marcello Lippi and Fabio Cannavaro and funded by real estate giant Evergrande Group, they won trophy after trophy. But while they achieved glory domestically and in Asia, their parent company was overextending itself and became mired in a property bubble, leading to their eventual demise.

Evergrande is now the world's most indebted real estate company and a poster child for China's property crisis, owing more than $300 billion (£225 billion). Its former club – now in the hands of new owners – was kicked out of the league in January. After years of lavish spending, the eight-time champions are still struggling to repay their debts, showcasing the unsustainable nature of their success.

But this isn't the only crisis facing Chinese football. Its rapid rise created another problem: corruption. "I should have walked the right path. I was just doing what was commonplace at the time," said Li Tie, the former head coach of China's national men's football team, in a 2024 documentary, revealing the deep-seated issues within the system.

In that documentary, Li Tie made a shocking admission: over the years, he fixed matches and paid bribes to secure certain positions, including paying 3 million yuan (£331,000, $418,500) to become the national team coach in 2019. Dressed in black, he marked a written confession with an inky fingerprint: "I am very sorry," expressing his remorse.

In preparation for last year's Asian Cup in Qatar, the Chinese national team was required to watch the documentary, produced by state broadcaster CCTV. The prime-time exposé, co-produced by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), was the first episode in China's anti-corruption series, "Always on the Move," signaling the government's serious intent to tackle corruption.

In it, dozens of Chinese officials admitted – always on camera – to staggering levels of corruption in various industries. By airing the football episode first, the authorities signaled their grave concern about corruption within the sport. Li Tie, a former World Cup player and former player for English Premier League team Everton, was the most high-profile figure arrested in an unprecedented anti-corruption crackdown in Chinese football last year.

Last December, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The documentary also publicly shamed former Chinese Football Association president Chen Xuyuan and former deputy director of the General Administration of Sport Du Zhaocai. "The corruption of these officials breaks our hearts," one fan told CCTV. "I'm not surprised," said another, reflecting a sense of resignation.

The documentary echoed what a former national team player said in an anonymous interview for a BBC radio documentary in 2015: that there was a system of "open bidding" for players to compete for places in the team. "I could have won more caps, but I didn't have the money," he said, highlighting the pervasive influence of corruption.

It took another 10 years for corruption in football to explode into the spotlight. Some believe this was fueled by the Chinese team's poor performance on the pitch. Given the success of other sports in China, the struggles of the men's football team stand out in stark contrast, amplifying the sense of disappointment.

Decades of investment in infrastructure and training have transformed China from a sporting desert into a medal-winning machine, recently matching the United States with 40 gold medals at the Paris Olympics. But many of these are individual events – weightlifting, swimming, diving – which require fewer resources and, crucially, less emphasis on community-led grassroots efforts compared to a sport like football.

These sports are also less lucrative and therefore less susceptible to corruption and mismanagement. As China's economy is hit by a sustained downturn, officials face bigger challenges than the football predicament. But that is of little comfort to fans, who long for success on the football pitch.

The loss to Japan was particularly painful. Over the past two decades, the Japanese team has gone from strength to strength, while the Chinese team has failed to qualify for any World Cups. The day after the match, the Oriental Sports Daily wrote bluntly: "When the taste of bitterness reaches its extreme, all that remains is numbness," capturing the prevailing sentiment.

Dreyer believes that Japan's approach is the polar opposite of China's: a long-term vision, a lack of political interference, and a commercially minded club structure. "Even so, the fan culture here [in China] is still very good," he added. "They deserve more," acknowledging the passion and loyalty of Chinese football fans.

Their disappointment was palpable after the defeat to Australia on Tuesday – but so was their sense of humor. "It seems the national team's performance is as stable as ever," one fan wrote on social media. Another joked that if China wants to continue to thrive economically, then its football team must suffer in order to balance the "national fortune," showcasing a blend of frustration and dark humor.

Perhaps they have resigned themselves to what a popular Chinese journalist wrote in his blog after Japan's victory over China. He pointed out that football "cannot be elevated by singing praises or telling stories. It requires skill, and physical and tactical training. It cannot be achieved through politics," emphasizing the need for genuine sporting development over political maneuvering.