2011 China National Olympics Team

Chinas future is soccer has never looked good has it? Sometimes maybe, the teams that has played in Toulon almost always looked good. Not this years though.

 

So what's the format here? The winner on aggregate goes on to next round and the loser goes out for good? Or are there other teams to play?

If Blazevic is not replaced for the away game I can only conclude the boss is not determined enough to save Chinese soccer.

 

i think this is a tough problem to solve for china, how to get more parents interested in soccer. unlike a lot of the afrianca/south american country where poverty is more rampant, soccer is a way out, to at least have a chance to make a living so kids/parents are interested. and unlike europe/japan/US where the economy is more developed and older generation doesn't depend on their kids to support them, China falls just in between. they can afford to send their only kid to school/college to get a good job and at the same time they depend on them supporting them. if you send the kid to soccer school and he fails, now what? you are 20 and you dont have a degree and ur pretty much screwed, your whole family is probably screwed. so parents think why take that risk? i dunno if im making any sense but its going to be tough to solve, would love to see how others would solve this?

 

Watched this year's Toulon team against France. Completely outclassed. Very poor soccer IQ. Chinese soccer is back to the stone age... we have long long ways to go. Having more youngsters play the game might be a good start. But it's tough because it's hard to even find decent soccer fields. Only the riches can afford soccer schools... all in all lots and lots of structural problems.

 

Follow the J-league model. A huge problem we have is our schools (from grade school to universities) don't encourage the sport. Most schools don't even have the proper facilities, let alone organized teams. Whereas in Japan they have very well-organized teams in nearly every school from grade school to uni. All the school teams participate in regional tournaments every year, and then the best team in each region participate in the national tournament. The brightest stars from high schools and uni are then sent to the pro teams. Thus a never-ending supply of promising young players. This guy who studies in Japan sums it up best:

"一位名为在日本读书的网友@皮蛋熊也回复说：“这点我深有感受，学校足球部连续2年获得关西地区冠军。去年为职业联赛球队输送4人。足球部1-4年级总计80多人，这是正式统计的数字。余下 5,6个非正式的足球团体，每个小组常年参加足球活动的人数不低于50人。光是我们学校常年参加足球运动，训练的。”郝董对此也很认可，表示：“知道为什么日本足球为何如此强大了吧。”

This problem will not be solved in only a few years. I predict it'll take at least one generation (about 20 years) when the country is more developed and grass root and school-wide soccer can take a strong hold. Right now the entire system is based upon kids with rich parents sending them to soccer academies, and even then it is so corrupt that some of them have to bribe their way to first-team soccer. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why we are so far behind the developed soccer nations.

 

If the away-goal rule applies then winning 2 -1 is sufficient. But that seems unlikely to happen. So it looks like the next time China U-23 play in the Olympics is when Guangzhou hosts the event.

If Blazevic is still in charge I can only say TMD although that's not my favourite expletive.

As I have said many times before Chinese soccer has got to fix its defence at all levels. No point scoring one goal if your opponent scores 10. I observe that Chinese playing abroad are basically midfielders and strikers. Since Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai no defenders have caught the attention of foreign clubs in non-Asian leagues. So we are running a deficit in that department.

 

I think Chinese parents do have dreams for their kids in sports but not in soccer. Most likely table tennis followed by badminton and gymnastics.

Yao Ming's success in the NBA probably created dreams of fame on the basketball court for 20 to 30 million kids. But by the time they turn 18 more than 80 % will stop dreaming because they are not tall enough.

Likewise more kids wanted to become track stars after Liu Xiang's gold medal performance in Athens and sports shops probably find themselves selling a lot more tennis rackets now. But there are no dreamers in soccer.

So what's the solution? The obvious answer seems to be to make the kids dream of being soccer stars. But how to make them dream? The soccer team must start winning first. So that's a catch 22 situation really.

 

Bali is awesome

 

What a unlucky call there at the end. Thank goodness Oman didn't score on that breakaway. We've got extra periods now or what?

 

What's wrong with the goal????