Soccer fever
June 13, 2014
It's by no means a given that a political world power also has to have a successful soccer team.
The United States is the best example. National team coach Jürgen Klinsmann managed to bring the team forward a bit over the past years - the US team did qualify for the World Cup in Brazil after all. But it would be surprising if they survived the group phase. The US will most likely always be a soccer dwarf, but that doesn't faze Americans. They've already chosen their favorite sports. Anyone looking to win a top job in politics has to be able to open a baseball game with a decent first pitch. People would have shook their heads in amazement if President Barack Obama had set up a goal instead of a basketball court in the White House garden. Soccer? Forget about it.
It's different in China: the Chinese would like to play on the international pitch but can't. China last qualified for a World Cup 12 years ago. But in contrast to the United States, the Chinese team's poor showing really bothers the Chinese. After all, there is no other country in all of Asia that is as enthusiastic about soccer.
Millions of Chinese watched the opening match Brazil-Croatia live on TV, even though it meant getting up at 4 a.m. Ahead of every match, a panda bear is consulted as an oracle to predict the results. For weeks, forged sick notes have been auctioned off on the Taobao website for online shopping, China's version of Ebay. A sick note to get someone through to the final on July 13 costs the equivalent of 150 euros ($203.
Soccer fever is not limited to the World Cup, either. When Beijing's local Guoan team meets an opponent from the Chinese Super League in the city's Workers' Stadium, the eastern part of this city of 21 million inhabitants is regularly paralyzed for hours. You're stuck between busloads of fans, honking cars and ranting taxi drivers. The scenario is the same for Guangzhou Evergrandes' home games in southern China or for Shanghai Shenhua matches.
Their enthusiasm has a long legacy: Chinese leader Mao Zedong played goalkeeper at his college and his successor Deng Xiaoping is said to have scraped together his last money when he lived in France as a foreign exchange student to buy a ticket for a match in the 1924 Olympic Games.
Soccer is also on President Xi Jinping's to-do list.
In 2011, two years before taking office, China's president listed his three most fervent soccer wishes: China should again participate in the World Cup, host a World Cup tournament and win a World Cup.
But even if Xi is serious, soccer in China has reached a point where even the power of the Communist Party is exhausted. The Chinese will remain soccer lightweights for the foreseeable future.
According to Beijing's logic, athletic success is just as foreseeable as political success. At first sight, the 2008 Olympics - hosted by China and topped off with a new gold medal record won by China's athletes - appears to be the best evidence. Letting the 3,000 best weightlifters, the 3,000 best gymnasts and the 3,000 best swimmers train hard for years and sending the best athletes to the Games may work. But soccer is a team sport - a huge problem for China's only children.
At home, they never learned to share. On the soccer pitch, it's unlikely they will learn to pass at just the right moment. Of course, there's a solution to the problem: The country's big clubs would need to reform their training programs. But such a move is highly unlikely because they have already found a much easier solution.
As the economy is booming, the clubs in the Chinese Super League are very well off indeed. Only last week, the biggest online platform provider, Alibaba, bought 50 percent of the shares of the present Chinese soccer champion Guangzhou Evergrande. But so far, they haven't invested that money particularly well. Instead of financing good training programs for young Chinese players, they prefer buying foreign top stars. Under such conditions, the chances of the Chinese national team ever becoming more competitive seem rather slim. The same attitude can be observed in the Chinese car industry: The Chinese car makers simply brought VW, Audi, BMW and Daimler into their country. The result is that foreign car companies have become even more successful while the Chinese themselves are still not able to put a car together.
Well-paid foreign trainers such as Bora Milutinovic or his Italian colleague Marcello Lippi may have managed to get the Chinese team into shape for the final round of the World Cup in 2002, and to train some teams within China. But that's it. It's a mystery, but it seems that they simply cannot cope with it. Even Otto Rehhagel who successfully managed to train the Greeks in soccer, would fail disastrously in China.
DW correspondent Frank Sieren has been living in Beijing for 20 years.