The Chinese Football FAQ  
(to be updated in a 2-monthly rhythm in analogy to The Shot That Passed Right Through The Net)
 
 
China - a country so big and so populated hard to imagine for Europeans. And it should be a sleeping giant in football. Asking themselves Europeans could hardly answer questions about this exciting place of the world although many have a Chinese restaurant just about the corner.  

Zhou Yu has been so kind to start to help The Shot That Passed Right Through The Net in beginning to ask and answer some first questions. 
 
This first update has 3 parts: 
 
THIS DOCUMENT IS COMPONENT OF  THE SHOT THAT PASSED RIGHT THROUGH THE NET  
-Thanks to Zhou Yu 
The next update will have more questions about those three aspects  
-You have questions yourself? MAIL here. 

There is also The Chen Yang Update.This is more a service to Chinese soccer fans as it is an archive of short reports given by The Shot That Passed Right Through The Net on the Chinese National player playing for German club Eintracht Frankfurt.
 
 


China and football - An introduction by The Shot That Passed Right Through The Net 
back to CHINESE FOOTBALL FAQ index
 
It is said that some kind of football was played already 10000 years ago in China and so the area might be some kind of home for the game. Anyway it is such a huge country and if it does not make the same mistakes as some of the former sowiet influenced sport programs involved, China with its huge reservoir could become a power to reckon with. Youth programs have already produced squads that were able to scare some big names at youth tournaments. But similar had been accomplished before (for example some Arabian and African teams have been quite impressive at youth level).  
To help establishing the Chinese game on adult level a professional league was installed and foreign coaches were hired. Now Chinese players start to go into European leagues and gather experiences. The player Chen Yang has had a surprising debut at Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt despite language bareers.  
One of the big problems is the Asian World Cup qualification 'keyhole'. It is hard to get through to the World Cup to collect experiences at all. There are about 10 equally strong top teams among the about 40 contenders that will try to qualify for the 2 places allocated to Asia alongside Corea and Japan for 2002. But to become a real power, one usually has to learn first at some big tournaments. This is why also the Olympic qualifiers will play an important role in the Chinese football program. 
 
 
 


China and football - questions and answers 
back to CHINESE FOOTBALL FAQ index
 
How many cities with a population of more than 1.000.000 are there in  
China?  
you didnt think that maybe you could plus a 0 after 1,000,000. You know, China has a population more than 1,200,000,000, almost 1/5 of the human beings on the earth. So in some big cities, you must be able to know 'how' many so as to ramble on the streets. And in my mind, the nunber that the city hold a population of  more than 1,000,000 may be from 34 to37 or so, just as Shanghai, Peking, Guangzhou,Xian, and so on. Among them, there are 3 cities with a population of more than 10 million, Shanghai 13million, Peking 11million and Chongqing 30million(It has large area of suburb region). All these doesn't include the migratory people but includes the human beings of the suburb towns.  

How many of them do have a professional football club?  
The professional league has only been founded for 5 years. So there are a lot of problems in the running of a club. In these years, some 'club' commandeer some players temporary in order to prepare for the games deciding for the next year qualification of the first class league. Except for the super class league and the first class league, there are a great deal of mess with the remainder. So in some hand, there are only 30 clubs are more regular. But another big problem haunting with   
every club is how to market. Because of the disparity of the wealth, some cities have one or more clubs and other cities may have none. The clubs of the cities just as Shanghai, Peking, Dalian, Sichuan are a little better. There are also many shortcomings in our clubs which are very popular in some developed clubs just like yours. Medical treatment, training systems of the youth, and so on are what we should give emphasis to.  

How big is the audience in the stadiums?  
Commonly the stadiums in China can hold almost 20,000 to 50,000 audience. Some can hold more, Shanghai Stadium's capacity is 80,000, Peking Worker Stadium 72,000 and so on. Except some minority stadiums, the turf  is a big problem both for the players and the audience. 

How ist the TV situation, how many channels?  
Cause China is too large, so it is difficult to know exactly how many TV stations and channels in all?I can only give you some information about Shanghai. Shanghai has STV,OTV and ETV 3 local wireless TV station and one local wire TV station which hold 10 channels. If including CCTV(national central TV station) and some satellitic channels such as CNN,NBC,NHK, in Shanghai we can enjoy the programs through about 30 channels.  

How is football (re)presented on TV?  
Of course the soccer match is rebroadcasted on live. In Shanghai the authority of the rebroadcast of the Shanghai Shenhua Club is shared by STV and OTV. But i think that till now, neither the club nor the TV station has made full use of the rebroadcast. Cause there are a far more bigger commercial market than they has developed now. 
 
 


Actual football: The Asian Games and the final table of the C-league 
back to CHINESE FOOTBALL FAQ index
 
What is the meaning of those coming Asian Games in particular for football?  
The Asian Games is only a synthetic sports meet just like the Olympic Games. As you know the soccer match is one of the  competitive matches in the Asian games which covering the whole asian countries as the Olympic including the whole world.  
 
 
THE FINAL OF THE C-LEAGUE 98 
     TEAM                W    D    L    G    F    SCORE
1    Dalian Wanda        19   5    2    64   16   62
2    Shanghai Shenghua   11   12   3    43   23   45
3    Beijing Guoan       10   13   3    32   19   43
4    Guangzhou Songri    10   6    10   23   33   36
5    Sichuan Quanxing    8    10   8    32   34   34
6    Qingdao Hainiu      8    8    10   24   30   32
7    Qianwei Huandao     8    8    10   29   29   32
8    Wuhan Hongjinglong  8    8    10   26   32   32
9    Luneng Taishan      8    8    10   38   40   32
10   Shenyang Haishi     7    10   9    20   28   31
11   Yanbian Aodong      9    4    13   25   31   31
12   Shenzhen Pingan     7    9    10   29   43   30
13   Army                8    5    13   27   37   29
14   Guangzhou Apolo     4    8    14   25   41   20
*  The position from 6 to 9 is based on their net goals among this four teams.Also to the 10 to 11.
*  The two teams of the list of the bottom(red) will have to play in the First League next year.
 
 
 
 

© THE SHOT THAT PASSED RIGHT THROUGH THE NET