Just two days after Guangzhou Evergrande FC secured a historic fourth consecutive Chinese Super League (CSL) title on Sunday, China’s anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the CPC (also known as Jijianwei) published an article on its official website, harshly criticizing China’s professional football.
The article titled “What Will It Take to Save ‘Deflated Football’” came two days after a report was issued by an inspection team sent by the CCDI to inspect the operation of the General Administration of Sport of China (GASC) and its affiliated event governing centers.
The article decried that “Chinese football not only has remained underperforming, but also has become the breeding ground for malpractices and corruption” since the league’s professional introduction in 1994.
The report touched on almost all the defects in Chinese football, from problems like match-fixing, illegal betting, crooked referees and officials taking bribes in the professional league, to draft bribery and age fabrication in the youth league.
The widely mocked Chinese national football team, who never fails to disappoint, inevitably got a mention for basically being the epitome of the failure of Chinese football. The record breaking settlement of nearly RMB 80 million (including severance fee) with the former national team coach José Antonio Camacho, who was fired following the team’s humiliating 5-1 loss to Thailand and him failing the mission of leading the team to the 2014 Brazil World Cup (a.k.a. Mission Impossible) is also singled out by the article.
This is not the first time Chinese football received penalty cards from government authority for foul play. As a painful national joke, the governing body of football in China — the Chinese Football Association — has seen several of its senior officials, including former president Nan Yong, his predecessor Xie Yalong, and former vice head Yang Yimin, convicted on corruption charges during the past few years.
More than 50 people — referees, players, officials and coaches — were arrested following a campaign launched in 2009 to reform the sport.
A referee named Lu Jun, who officiated at the World Cup, was jailed in 2012 for receiving more than USD 128,000 in bribes to fix the results of seven football league games.
China’s professional league, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen itself despite the scandals by hiring European star players and world-class coaches to enliven the game, which remains one of the most popular sports in China.
For a country with a population of over 1.3 billion and probably the biggest fan base in the world, China manages to redefine underperforming over and over again.
Surprisingly, with all the underperforming, blatant lying, cheating, occasional emotional breakdowns and having anger management issues on Chinese football’s part, fans (with incredibly high tolerance for douchebaggery) still choose to stay in this abusive relationship. According to a report issued this summer on attendance figures in world professional football, Chinese Super League topped the list in Asia, ranking 10th worldwide, which is just some 78 places above the national team’s FIFA ranking.
Speaking of which, it's worth remembering that football corruption is not a uniquely Chinese affliction:
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