Song Dandan and Zhao Benshan performed a skit at the previous Spring Festival Gala.
The host asked, what kind of sport makes people look heart-wrenching?
Song Dandan answered, football.
The host asked, what sport is more heart-wrenching?
Song Dandan answered, Chinese football.
On February 1, 2022, the Chinese men's football team lost 1-3 to Vietnam and missed the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
On the first day of the Chinese New Year, a divine prophecy of Fan Zhiyi swept the screen in the circle of friends.
At this moment, the mood of Chinese fans is heart-wrenching, bad-hearted, or heart-blocking? Or is it that the Chinese men's football team has been absent-minded, and even the heart is like stopping water?
But to be honest, the Chinese men's football team has not always been like this, and it has also had moments of burning emotion.
The age of burning love
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, everything was in ruins and the level of Chinese football was very low.
Once, the Chinese football team visited Eastern Europe and played against Czechoslovakia, playing 1-17. In 1954, the Hungarian three teams came to China, and the Chinese national team played against it, and the score was 1-8.
In order to improve the level of the national team, China decided to send young players to Eastern Europe to study. At that time, Hungary had just defeated England, and the place where the limelight was in full swing and learned from the teachers was chosen here, and the chinese players were guided by the famous coach Yousef.
When they first arrived in Hungary, Chinese players could not even hand over the second division team. Once, after the Hungarian track and field team finished training, they played a game with China, and the Chinese team actually lost a goal.
In order to improve the confidence of Chinese players, Yousef specifically found low-level teams to play against the Chinese team. After a year and a half, The Chinese players have made rapid progress, whether it is physical strength, technology, tactics, there has been great progress. After completing the study, the Chinese team has been able to compete with the Hungarian first-class team.
A year later, the Chinese team participated in the World Youth Festival, the first match against the host Poland, the outside world expected the most conservative score is Poland's 6-0 victory over the Chinese team, but the result was unexpected, the Polish team exhausted all its strength, to win with a slight advantage of 3-2.
In the team trained by Yousef, there are many prominent figures in the football world, such as Li Fenglou, Chen Chengda, and Nian Weisi, who later became the president of the Chinese Football Association.
Group photo of the Chinese team studying in Hungary
In 1960, in the "China, North Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia" four-country football competition, the Chinese team won the championship.
In August of the previous year (1977), China held the International Football Invitational Tournament, which was held in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, with a total of 12 teams (9 foreign teams) participating, and the Chinese youth team won the championship. In September, the U.S. Cosmic Soccer team led by world soccer superstars Pele and Beckenbauer visited China, and the Chinese team played two games with them, one win and one draw.
In 1979, four media units, including Sports News, held the "1979 National Best Athlete" selection, and football player Rong Zhixing was rated as one of the "Top Ten".
In addition to his excellent skills, Rong Zhixing is also praised for his balls, respecting his teammates, opponents and referees on the field, and his tough style of daring to fight and his self-cultivation that is not humble are called - Zhixing style.
In 1977, Chinese star Rong Zhixing took a group photo with Pele, the king of the ball
In the 1980s, the Chinese football team participated in many major international competitions and achieved gratifying results.
In 1982, the Chinese football team won the third place in the Asia Pacific Finals of the 12th World Cup Preliminary Round. In 1984, the Chinese team won the second place in the 8th Asian Cup Football Tournament. In 1987, the Chinese team participated in the 24th Olympic Football Qualifiers, won the right to qualify from the group, and rushed out of Asia on the Olympic field.
China's impact on the 12th World Cup in the 1980s has been fresh in the minds of countless fans.
On January 10, 1982, Spain's World Cup Asia Pacific Qualifier, China and New Zealand competed for the opportunity to qualify, at that time, the Chinese team led New Zealand by 2 points, the goal difference was 5 more, as long as in the last game, Saudi Arabia did not lose to New Zealand 5 or more goals, China can secure the right to qualify.
To this end, the Chinese team thought that it was safe to sit back and relax, so it announced the holiday in advance, who expected that in the last game, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia just tacitly played 5-0. In a hurry, the Chinese team, which had announced a holiday, regrouped to prepare for the play-offs, and lost 1-2 to New Zealand, losing the opportunity to qualify.
If Chinese football has a burning era, for now, before and after the reform, before and after the 1990s, it is relatively pure.
At that time, playing football is kicking, watching the ball is watching the ball, winning is winning, losing is losing, there are not so many bells and whistles, in one fight after another, the fans really believe that Chinese football will get better and better, will rush out of Asia, to the world.
Even after returning home a stone's throw away from the World Cup in Spain, fans still have the hope of thriving: wait, next time, next time will work. As the Great Gatsby says:
The future used to slip away from our hands, but it doesn't matter, because tomorrow we'll run faster and our arms will stretch longer. There will always be a good morning.
With the deepening of reform and opening up, all walks of life in China can emerge from all walks of life, and hundreds of boats are competing for the current, Chinese not only runs faster, the arms are extended longer, the money is also more and more, and the waist pole is getting harder and harder.
So, what about Chinese football?
Lost football
In 1992, Xu Genbao, as the coach of the national team and the national Olympic team, led the national Olympic team to Kuala Lumpur and shouted an inspiring slogan: horizontal a heart, must qualify.
The national Olympic team that went to Kuala Lumpur was called the strongest in history at the time, but the sky was not what anyone wanted, and in the case of being able to qualify as long as it was drawn, it experienced the "black nine minutes" and returned home again.
Under pressure, Xu Genbao resigned as the head coach of the national Olympic team and the national team, and obtained an embarrassing resume: a national team coach who had never led the national team to play.
Xu Genbao
After resigning, Xu Genbao did not idle, and with Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Co., Ltd., he invited the famous German football coach Schlapner to coach in China.
Volkswagen took on Schlapner's expenses and put forward two conditions: First, the Chinese Football Association and Volkswagen jointly hired foreign coaches, the Chinese Football Association signed a work contract with it, Volkswagen signed a salary contract with it, and the three parties signed another employment contract. Second, the coach hired should carry out the necessary product promotion and promotion for Volkswagen.
On June 24, 1992, the Chinese Football Association and Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Co., Ltd. jointly held a press conference in the Great Hall of the People to jointly appoint Schlapner as the head coach of the Chinese national men's football team.
Schlapner
The Chinese Football Association hired foreign coaches, which produced a sensational effect and opened the curtain on the capitalization of football.
From June 22 to 27, 1992, the National Football Work Conference was held in Hongshankou, Beijing, and the final route of China's football professionalization reform was determined.
In November of the following year, the Chinese Football Association formed a negotiating team to negotiate with IMG, a fifa-owned promoter, on the China A-League, tournament naming and commercial sponsorship. After three months of hard fighting, IMG won the commercial development rights of the A-League for 5 years with a contract fee of US$1.2 million a year and an annual increase of 20%.
At this point, football has become the earliest project in China's sports industry to profit from the market.
Subsequently, the famous American tobacco company Marlboro became the title sponsor of the A-League and became the first major company in the world to get involved in Chinese professional football.
Marlboro became the first major international company to set foot in Chinese football
On April 17, 1994, the Chinese Football League A began, tens of thousands of fans bought tickets to enter, the first round of the game, the country 6 venues, a total of about 150,000 people watched. The teams that participated in that year included: Dalian Wanda, Guangzhou Helios, Shanghai Shenhua, Liaoning Far East, Shandong Taishan, Sichuan Quanxing, Beijing Guoan, Guangdong Hongyuan, Jilin Sanxing, Beijing Bayi, Shenyang Six Medicines and Jiangsu Mater, and finally won the championship by Dalian.
In order to narrow the gap between Chinese football and foreign strong teams, in addition to hiring foreign coaches, the Football Association also thought of a trick: send players overseas for training.
From 1992 to 1993, Guangdong Jianlibao Group cooperated with the Football Association to select 22 "football top students" to form the Jianlibao Youth Team, which went to Brazil, the kingdom of football, to start a football study abroad career. In 1996, 7 players, including Li Weifeng, were added to the team, and the number reached 29, and the Jianlibao team was officially formed, which was hailed as the hope for the future of Chinese football.
In 1993, Jianlibao went to Brazil to study family portraits
Unfortunately, after the return of the Jianlibao team in 1998, the players scattered and did not participate in the league alone, although there were excellent players such as Li Tie, Li Weifeng, and Shang Yi, but they were far from meeting the expectations of improving the level of Chinese football.
The capitalization and marketization of football has not changed the fate of Chinese football at present, but it has indeed changed the fate of many practitioners.
Wei Qun, a former Sichuan Quanxing player, recalled that I never thought that I could make money by playing football, and when I first entered the Sichuan team, my monthly salary was more than 40 yuan, and in 1993, I was selected for the national second team, and my salary rose to 107 yuan. Once, when I went to play a game in a foreign country, there was no commercial sponsorship, so I could only pick the cheapest hotel and spent the night in the hotel bathtub. At that time, my biggest wish was to have a fixed job after retiring.
In 1994, the A-League began, and the salaries of Sichuan Quanxing players rose to more than 1,000 yuan, while the hot Liaoning team members had already earned 5,000 yuan a month. That year, the game was won, and Wei Qun received a prize of 3,000 yuan, which he dramatically described:
3,000 yuan, all 50 yuan a piece, I spread the money on the bed one by one to count, after counting began to be in a daze.
At the beginning of the A-League, football was a good business.
At that time, Guangzhou Suns as the runner-up team, a year of operating costs of less than 8 million yuan, and only ticket revenue is more than ten million, low cost and high return stirred a pool of spring water, Guangzhou football market boomed for a while.
Guangdong Hongyuan once used 640,000 yuan and 420,000 yuan respectively to "buy" Liaoning team Li Bing and Sichuan team Ma Mingyu, becoming the first club in the transfer market to eat crabs. In 1996, Guangdong football reached its peak in the professional league, and at the same time had four A-A teams in Guangzhou Helios, Guangdong Hongyuan, Guangzhou Songri and Shenzhen Fiyada, setting a record for Chinese football.
Playing in the league pays attention to winning, winning pays attention to the use of good coaches, and coaches are dismissed from class if they have poor performance.
Clubs in Guangdong, in the years of the A-A flames, frequently replaced coaches, and for a time, the wind of firing coaches and squid became more and more intense, expanding from Guangdong to the whole country. FIFA's Football Coach Quarterly has written criticisms:
The Chinese professional football league, which is currently at the starting point, suffers from a terrible incurable disease, 26 first-class teams have set off a coaching competition, in just a few months, crazy change of coach, many excellent coaches have been fired for short-term results.
Frying coaches is like flipping stocks, speculating to the last chicken feathers.
Guangdong Hongyuan was relegated in 1997, Guangzhou Helios was relegated in 1998, subsequently, Guangzhou Songri was relegated, Guangdong Foshan was sold, and Guangdong football fell into a low ebb.
In the A and A League, each team basically has a coach to eat and live with, an important job of the coach is to supervise the player's work and rest time, every time to the away game, the management difficulty increases, the coaches are very nervous.
A team in the north, go to Guangzhou to play away, the coach at the exit of the hotel floor, set up a small table, a chair, a pot of tea, in order to prevent players from going out privately, every day until two or three o'clock in the morning. A few players could not put their hearts in place, and even climbed out of the window along the rope to go to the southern flower world.
The professionalization and marketization of football, the emergence of many other players as stars, the money in their pockets is getting bigger and bigger, and the owners of the clubs have to give them a lot of money in order to win. Every post-game holiday, some stars like to drink bitterly, two good drinkers in a club, two people singing to the wine, blowing on the bottle, drinking a whole case of 24 bottles of beer at a time.
In 1998, after Marlboro withdrew from the A League, PepsiCo took over the baton and signed a five-year agreement with the Chinese Football Association, and the cost soared, from $7 million in the Marlboro era to $46 million.
In 2000, 2001 and 2002, Pepsi Cola invited Aaron Kwok and Jay Chou to sing at the opening ceremony of A and A for three consecutive years, and also tailored a theme song for the A-League, that is, Guo Tianwang's "Move Up" that made people want to twist the crotch shaft.
In 2002, a year before the contract expired, Pepsi Terminated, supposedly because of dissatisfaction with Chinese professional football.
Dissatisfied with Chinese professional football, in addition to Pepsi, there is also Wanda's Lao Wang.
In 1998, Liaoning, ranked first and B, squeezed Dalian Wanda out of the final of the FA Cup. In the first round of the match, the two sides drew 1-1, and in the second round, the wanda team came out with the main force, still unable to win, and finally ended up in the penalty shootout.
No sooner had the penalty been kicked than Wanda Club chairman Wang Jianlin rushed to the referee and accused referee Yu Yuancong of unfairly awarding a penalty, with at least three penalties being awarded but not awarded.
At the subsequent press conference, Lao Wang spoke amazingly:
I should not have attended the press conference, the Chinese Professional Football League has been running for 5 years, although there has been progress, but there are too many dark sides on the field of play. Therefore, I solemnly put forward two points: first, Wanda Football Club will fully appeal against the enforcement of this game; second, based on the current situation, football is not enough, therefore, I officially announce that after this year's league, Wanda will withdraw from Chinese football forever to protest.
Lao Wang roared, allowing a steady stream of match-fixing and black whistles linked to huge economic interests to surface. Some teams directly spend huge sums of money to "buy the ball" to relegate or win the championship. The golden right foot kick of the match-fixing bridge in "Shaolin Soccer" has been staged in reality many times.
Under the soak of false fame and profit, many Chinese players have lost their basic ethics as athletes, not to mention the hardcore and healthy style like rong Zhixing, a benchmark player in the 80s.
In March 2000, six players from Shenzhen Ping An played an away match against Yunnan Hongta, and they summoned prostitutes at the team's hotel that night, and were arrested by head coach Tavarez. On May 31, 2001, four Shenyang Jinde players jumped out of the window from the training base and went to a barbecue stall seven or eight kilometers away to drink, during which they had a verbal altercation with the stall owner, smashed the stall owner to death with a wine bottle, and all four were sentenced and banned for life.
On the one hand, many Chinese players are in the paper drunken gold fans, on the other hand, the wave of football spectacle in the tide of capital is dizzying.
In 2003, real Madrid came to China, Beckham, Ronaldo, Zidane, Carlos, Raul, Figo six superstars appeared together, making countless fans crazy, while achieving great commercial success, setting a record for the highest single-game appearance fee in the history of Chinese football - 2 million euros, priced at more than 200,000 yuan per minute.
At the end of the 1990s, behind-the-scenes deals on player transfers were very common, and according to estimates, the value of active internationals ranged from 300,000 to 500,000 yuan, while private transactions often exceeded 1 million yuan.
At the turn of the century, Chinese football has actually "gone" to the world, but in the form of transfer to foreign countries. In 1998, Fan Zhiyi of Shanghai Shenhua team and Sun Jihai of Dalian Wanda team joined the British Crystal Palace Club.
The farewell figure of the gorgeous transfer set off the wilderness of Chinese football behind him.
Hope for the future
Avilange, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, attended boarding school in France, was extremely business-minded, ran a big bus company after graduation, and because of his love of football, he participated in F.C. Fluminense and won the Brazilian Youth Football League.
In 1974, at the 39th FIFA Congress in Frankfurt, Avilange was elected as the seventh FIFA President for a 24-year term.
When Avilange ascended to the FIFA throne, it was only $24 on FIFA's books, and in 1998, Avilange stepped down, and the fifa book figure was -- $4 billion.
As an old friend of Chinese, Avillange has repeatedly expressed his desire for China to host the World Cup:
The modern Olympics have gone through more than 100 years from birth to China, and I hope the World Cup doesn't take that long, maybe I won't be able to see that day, but I can use my reputation to assure everyone who made this decision that it will be a successful World Cup, just like the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
According to FIFA regulations, the bid for the World Cup is to some extent very simple, just to win the majority of the 24 FIFA executive committees, that is, 13 FIFA executive committees.
In addition, there are four hard conditions: 1 eligible bidding city; 2 stadium construction standards; 3 have the ability to receive and host large-scale sports events; 4 have entered recent World Cups.
Today, As the world's second largest economy, China's first three conditions have been met, even exceeding the standard, but only the fourth condition has become the "Kaspersky" for China to host the World Cup.
On April 22, 2001, Xi'an Suzaku Stadium, China beat the Maldives 10-1, opening the curtain of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea, in the group stage, China scored a total of 25 goals, conceded only 3 goals, with a record of 6 wins to enter the top ten.
On October 7, 2001, China played against Oman, Yu Genwei scored a goal that changed the history of Chinese football in the first half 36 minutes, the Chinese team defeated Oman 1-0, with a record of 6 wins, 5 wins and 1 draw, accumulating 16 points, two rounds of qualifying, rushing into the World Cup for the first time, fulfilling the long-cherished wish of Chinese football for 44 years.
In the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the Chinese team lost three games in the group stage and did not score a goal, ending its World Cup debut.
I remember that year, I was still in high school, after the Chinese team returned from the World Cup, there were many articles and reports on tv and newspapers criticizing the magic coach Milu, and I remember that a few so-called experts who looked crooked and cracked dates lived in vain, to the effect that if they engaged in Milu's set of "happy football" again, Chinese football would fall into a place of no return.
Not long after, Milu was out of class.
Milu
After Milu left class, the Chinese men's football team changed many sessions of coaching, the Chinese Football Association also changed many presidents, how much, can't remember, and didn't bother to remember, anyway, that is the years like shuttle bar, in the blink of an eye to see Fan Zhiyi in the circle of friends brushing the screen of the emotional and helpless face:
What level of Chinese football is now, and then it will lose to Vietnam, and the Thai team will lose vietnam after losing, and then lose to Myanmar, and then there is no need to lose.
Looking back on my youth now, I find that I also had a football dream, but it was a little twisted to touch.
In those years, we watched the Japanese film "Soccer Boy", full of blood, running and playing football on the "football field" without half a grass, and looking around, there were overdeveloped real estate and dense residential buildings. This passion for football lasted a short time before disappearing into the depths of time as the cartoons ran out.
I remember that there was a rather persistent old brother at that time, who originally fought early in love, broke out of the circle, and after becoming obsessed with football, he actually changed all his bad habits and made a wish to become a professional football player. The old man's family conditions are also good, he himself contacted and inquired, found a football club in the city, and was about to start his career as a football player, but because his parents forced him to induce and talked about a bunch of big truths, he gave up, and instead picked up his heavy school bag and went to the cram schools that he was not interested in at all.
Finally, to sum up, although the current level of Chinese football is not good, it has the largest number of fans in the world, and although the enthusiasm of fans is constantly being hit, it will not be extinguished after all.
Watched a TV show interview with a national football fan named Bin Ge, who, when he was 11 years old, watched an important game - on May 19, 1985, the Chinese football team lost to the Chinese team to hong Kong, resulting in the Chinese football team losing the qualification to represent Asia in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Since then, Chinese football has fallen again and again, but Bin Ge has traveled to major cities, working hard to go to the scene, cheering for Chinese football, and always enthusiastic.
Bin Ge said that Chinese football is like his own child, knowing that the exam is not good, he also has to go to school to send to school, and wait at the door after school.
Maybe one day, when Chinese teenagers can watch cartoons like "Football Boy" that Chinese themselves, can run and gallop on the green and standard stadium, can freely choose and realize their football ideals, and are not swayed by the pressure of thousands of troops crossing the single wooden bridge, Chinese football will usher in an era that truly belongs to itself.
END
Partial references:
1. "Research on the Development of Professional Football in China", by Zheng Zhiqiang, Linebound Bookstore.
2. "Chinese Football and the World Cup", by Li Yi
3. "What will save you?" Chinese Football", by Li Yuting, Xinhua Publishing House.