Football's faults lie with officials
Chong Zi  Updated: 2004-10-25 08:55

News that China will sack its national football head coach Dutchman Arie Haan doesn't surprise me.

The Chinese football team suffered a huge setback with a 1-0 defeat at World Cup Qualifier in Kuwait last week (October 13). This results means China's hope to progress into next year's final round of qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup is dim. Only the top team from each of the eight Asian groups will secure a berth in the final round. Kuwait are two goals better off than China and are unlikely to slip up when we play them in the next leg on Kuwaiti turf.

As hope and dreams of millions of Chinese football fans evaporate, the finger of blame has swung into action and has been eying up its scapegoat. Sure, the country's sports authorities can always find a whipping boy for the embarrassing performance of 22 football players.

Step forward then, fall guy Arie Hann, who may as well stay where he is currently holidaying in his homeland, the Netherlands.

The Beijing Morning News reported that the sports authorities will let Arie Haan go after China plays its last group match with Hong Kong on November 17.

The China Football Association signed a one-year contract with the Dutch coach in early 2003. The team finished second at the Asia Cup 2004 and this turned out to be a source of pride for the FA, if not the fans, and secured Haan another year as head coach.

However, fate has not been on his side and his team flounder when they meet with tough rivals.

The FA never expected the national football squad to exit from the group matches for the 2006 World Cup. The situation is untenable.

For them, this humiliation justifies the reason to dismiss the coach.

Haan has a solid track record. He represented the Netherlands in two World Cup finals for nearly three decades. He coached Feyenoord in the Netherlands and FV Stuttgart in Germany after retiring as a player in 1984.

He compiled a record of 19 wins for the China national team in the past six months.

He was trying to substitute a defensive approach with a more dynamic offensive style that reflects the Dutch game.

Yet his dismissal comes as little surprise. Haan is fourth foreign coach to be booted out from our national team.

The arrival of Germany's Klaus Schlappner heralded the "Westernization movement" in China's football. He was widely tipped for the chop in 1993 after the national side failed to make the 1994 World Cup finals in the United States.

Former Nottingham Forest and Colorado Rapids coach Bobby Houghton was next at helm.

The soccer association promptly sacked him in December 1999 after China failed to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Then came Serb Bora Milutiniovic in January 2000. He might go down as the luckiest foreign coach to have been employed by the FA. He guided the side to the 2002 World Cup co-sponsored by the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan.

However, his team failed to bring smiles to faces of Chinese soccer fans. The side's campaign notched up three losses and not one goal scored.

What then, did Milutinovic - dubbed as a "wonder worker" - bring to our country?

A place in the 2002 World Cup satisfied us for a while.

And Milutinovic was clever enough to leave after the curtain of the 2002 World Cup fell. Perhaps he knew our national team are deep down a bunch of weak no-hopers, on which nobody can work wonders.

Our national side has few memorable moments to record in their history.

But is it really sound policy by the FA to rely on foreigners to work miracles?

All four previous were appointed with one remit: to qualify for the World Cup or the Olympics.

This shortsightedness by the FA has failed to bring in someone to train our football players for the long term. This get-rich-quick mentality has been the reason why the FA's, and ultimately ours, the fans' dreams quickly and chaotically unravel as soon as the going gets tough, except of course, when Milutinovic steered the national team to the 2002 World Cup.

In a newspaper interview in April, Haan said the country's Major League, which kicked off in May, cannot significantly improve the standard of football because competitive games are too few.

In China, the football players play only 22 league games in a season, compared with 34 in some European countries.

Milutinovic predicted years ago that it would take a couple of decades before China can play at the level of good European or South American teams.

The cultural differences and language barriers between the foreign coaches and their players are a thorn in the flesh of China's footballing desire.

The coaches' only means of communicating with their players is via translators or the international language of ferocious gesticulation.

These, however, are by no means the worst annoyances.

We must ask ourselves if we have respected the experience and expertise the foreigners brought to this underdeveloped football culture.

The trend of employing foreign coaches has swept through Asia. Japan and ROK hired top quality Europeans - Phillipe Troussier and Guus Hiddink respectively. And these two countries have subsequently grown into football superhouses in Asia.

The size of a country does not determine how good it can be in the football field. In Asia, Japan and ROK set a good example.

Fifty-seven foreigners were hired as coaches for either the national team or soccer clubs in China.

All these foreigners have failed to do the trick for the impotence of the country's football.

I have hardly seen 22 men work really hard for their matches. They are a team without a heart, a team that lacks passion, desire and ambition.

This has disappointed me and put me off attending matches.

I am no football aficionado, and I know that I am not qualified to carp on about football issues.

I am ordinary fan who just wants my team to do well but cannot understand the thinking of those who run our national team and the leagues.

I started skipping the live broadcasts of the domestic football matches years ago because I could not see any ray of hope of excitement and passion from the 22 total strangers on the field. The footballers ran slowly in both attack and defence, and showed no drive or fighting spirit.

As a result, I no longer really care for the fortunes of the national side. Once in a while I may see a report about one more defeat and I feel a twang in my heart.

I could hardly believe what I heard after the recent loss to Kuwait. The optimists continue to present a forward-looking analysis as if asking for a miracle.

They should realize quickly miracles are by and large something manufactured by human hands, not a mystical footballing god in the sky. Our national team appear to be a lazy bunch who want luck to arrive in their lap as they sit on their behinds.

They fail to realize they must work extremely hard in training, take their inclusion in the squad seriously, take pride in the themselves, their team and their fans. Only when they shape up to the orders above will they turn in a good performance.

Football teams require good feet and good brains. A team without confidence, technique and strategy cannot win.

There is a high turnover of the players in the country though they do not look like the men you would spend millions a year on.

Would it matter if China finally triumphs? After all, it's only a game. What does it matter if we win or not, in the long run? What's another false dawn in an eternity of false dawns? What's a victory, for that matter? Everything, of course.

Soccer has not developed as hoped through a "professional" football league which kicked off 10 years ago. Setting aside differences on the field, the main reason for China lagging behind resides with its "professional system," which is never free of scandals such as "black whistles," match-fixing and gambling. China's new premier league cannot take to the field kitted out in the straight jacket of a bureaucratic hierarchy. Right now it is a matter of life and death for Chinese soccer.

But it is not fair to put the onus onto the coach and the coach alone to turn things around. Lazy, undisciplined players, cheaters and corrupt officials who make our professional league a mockery must be weeded out and replaced with men whose passion reflects that of their loyal following.

The journey for a new coach, either foreign or Chinese, will of course not be smooth. Let us hope we do not score another own goal.

(China Daily)

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