Tackling football's woes

While Chinese fans are staying up all night to watch the European football extravaganza, the jail terms for several former football officials for bribery or match-fixing have highlighted the ugly side of the beautiful game in this country.

Among those who were punished on Tuesday, Nan Yong and Xie Yalong, the former heads of Chinese football, were the highest-ranking officials caught up in the campaign to clean up the corruption-blighted local game two years ago. Also sentenced to jail terms were four footballers on the former national team.

China does not lack interest in this game. But corruption, match-fixing and mismanagement have deprived the game of its beauty in this country. The malpractices have spoiled the pool of skilled players and made it impossible to raise the standard of the matches.

The influx of foreign coaches - Sergio Batista, who guided Argentina's Olympic football team to the gold medal in Beijing four years ago, Marcello Lippi, who was Italy's 2006 World Cup-winning coach, and Takeshi Okada, who coached Japan to the last 16 at the 2010 World Cup - and players such as former Chelsea striker Nicolas Anelka into Chinese Super League teams sends the message that we are hoping that some of their past glory will rub off.

But without clean and efficient management, even these illustrious names will find it difficult to save Chinese football.

Other initiatives such as the Chinese Football Association sending more than 500 youngsters to Europe by 2016 should learn from past lessons to prove effective. A similar program in the 1990s, which sent a group of teenagers to Brazil for training, failed to build a strong pool of good players for the national team.

Chinese footballers didn't lack the technique to compete; they lacked the will to work hard in contests, because they didn't need to sweat when they could make big, easy money by cheating and fixing matches. Which expounds the significance of the anti-corruption campaign in the sport.

When rid of the corruption that has been holding it back, our poorly performing national football team will hopefully also present good matches that fans will stay up late for.

(China Daily 06/14/2012 page8)