Much still to be done to achieve goal of improving national soccer team

JAPAN'S PERFORMANCES in the ongoing World Cup in Russia should prompt China to reflect on the widening gap with its neighbor on the soccer field. People's Daily comments:

Soccer is one of the most popular sports in China, and the country is home to more than 200 million soccer fans. But despite the series of measures it has introduced to improve the sport, the results have been disappointing.

China started its professional soccer league in 1994, one year after the J League was established in Japan. But China's ranking in the world has fallen from around 50th to 90th since then, while Japan has risen from about 60th to 40th. This is mainly because Chinese clubs thirsty for quick success prefer buying star players from foreign countries rather than cultivating young talents, and because of the corruption in Chinese soccer, nurtured by hot money and slack supervision, which has ruined its image at home and abroad.