The hot village chao does not need more meaning

Recently, if there is anything explosive in the Chinese football circle, it is probably the friendly match between the Argentine team coming to China and the Guizhou Village Super League.

How hot is the village? According to data released by Xinhua News Agency, as of June 27, the relevant content has been viewed more than 20 billion times on all platforms on the Internet. This figure completely throws off professional competitions such as national team friendly matches and the Chinese Super League, and the attention of the Champions League final in China is far from this order of magnitude.

And we all know that whenever something goes this hot, it always attracts a lot of controversy. Some people use the village super to belittle the national football team again, and some people say that too much hype has no value at all. Today, let's talk about those things about the village super and whether this competition should bear more things.

【"On this day, Rongjiang has been waiting for a long time"】

The full name of the village super we call is Rongjiang (Sanbao Dongzhai) and the American Rural Football Super League. Rongjiang is the county seat of Qiandongnan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, and it has indeed had a spontaneous football foundation for many years, but the village super is still a fresh IP created by the county. The purpose, naturally, is to promote tourism and traditional culture.

Xu Bo, magistrate of Rongjiang County, said this very frankly in an interview with Xinhua News Agency. Since the end of 2021, Rongjiang County has planned 5 IP building activities in one and a half years, and the results are not satisfactory.

The first time was bullfighting with a deep mass base in Qiandongnan Prefecture, which was too dangerous and not conducive to promotion; The second time was the "CBA Basketball Invitational in the Mountains", and the promotion of the supporting equipment did not keep up after playing; The third is the Miao Drum and Tibetan Festival, where intangible cultural heritage lacks a wide audience; The fourth time is a half-marathon + folk festival, the race time is too short and there is no continuity; The fifth time is to refer to the experience of Taijiang County to engage in their own "village BA", but ... The cottage version is often inferior to the original.

Until, on May 13, 2023, the "Village Super" will start.

The 20 participating teams made up of villages will play the group stage before advancing to the knockout round until the final at the end of July. There are 9 substitutions per match, played every week from Friday to Sunday. Especially on Saturday match day, pre- and post-match games are interspersed with a large number of folklore performances, and four consecutive games are played from 3 pm to midnight, known as "Super Saturday".

The hottest "Super Saturday" had an audience of about 80,000, and nearly 20,000 remained late at night. Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily and other media have opened live broadcasts on major platforms, and the wonderful goals with the "village chao" label have easily exceeded 100 million views on short video platforms.

Han Qiaosheng came to the scene to participate in the commentary, Fan Zhiyi brought the Guolo Tibetan United team to play the village super team, Michael Owen sent an encouragement video, Hua Chunying praised "this is a great game", and even the BBC published an article introducing the event. To some extent, this may really be the most out-of-the-loop, or even "most abroad" moment of Chinese football in a positive sense in recent years.

Rongjiang County's sixth IP shaping attempt finally achieved explosive success.

County magistrate Xu Bo said: "On this day, Rongjiang has been waiting for a long time. Practice has proved that whether it is sports or intangible cultural heritage, it is difficult to create a single IP, and the two must be cleverly combined. ”

According to him, nearly 50,000 of Rongjiang County's 385,000 people can play football and like to play football. "This number is amazing when you think about it! Therefore, the football league is a comparative advantage of Rongjiang, because the public participation is high, and everyone recognizes such activities.

Exaggerated or not, at least the county does have 14 standard-sized football fields, and there are many children who play twice between village games.

Of course, this is not to say that this is really the place with the strongest football atmosphere in the country. There are actually many spontaneous amateur leagues in various places, but it is difficult for them to have a unique ethnic minority culture like Rongjiang, and they have strong development support from the local government.

Performing the ethnic costumes of the villagers, the curiosity and interaction triggered by intangible cultural heritage such as "Dong Song" and "Miao Asparagus Dance", and the festive atmosphere created by local delicacies such as Rongjiang roll flour and barbecue... Together, these form the human fireworks of the "village super", packaging amateur football, an activity that usually does not receive attention, into a big meal.

Completely ignited the traffic.

[Don't challenge your career, don't look down on amateurs]

I have to admit that there is indeed a lot of traffic brought by the village chao, which comes from those who take the opportunity to mock the national football team. You can see comments like this in the comment area of many places, and even on the headlines of some self-media: "This level can't play for the national football team", "They can play in the World Cup", "The village is more than a team battle, does the national football dare to agree?" ”

I used to think that this kind of tongue was a momentary speed, but then I found out... It turns out that someone really thinks so.

Any rational rebuttal to these statements is probably futile, but I would like to give some examples. Rongjiang County, which hosts the village supermarket, belongs to Qiandongnan Prefecture, and Qiandongnan really has a team participating in the regular amateur league of the Zhongguan, called Qiandongnan Miaoling.

In this year's China Champions League League, they lost 0-3, 0-7, 1-11 and 1-6 in the first four rounds, and currently rank bottom with 2 goals and 27 goals conceded.

If you watch professional football and watch the live broadcast of the village super league, you can understand at a glance that the intensity of confrontation and the rhythm of the game are two different things. Even if you don't know what kind of system the football league is, the above standings can tell you: if the village super is really strong, the first thing to challenge is not the national football team, but to help Qian Dongnan win a place in the middle championship.

This is only the division stage of the middle championship, and the top two in the division can only enter the main event, and the top two can be promoted to the middle second division. Then the top of the middle B is the middle league, the top of the middle A is the Chinese Super League, and the Chinese Super League selects people to enter the national team (basically). Between the village super and the national football team, there are so many layers of level gap.

And the so-called "Chinese football hopes in Guizhou" statement also has many untenable.

Due to the lack of grassroots coaches, lack of competition opportunities, and the dissolution of the professional team Hengfeng/Zhicheng, there are many limitations in the talent training of Guizhou football.

On the one hand, children interested in football can basically only go to Guiyang or Zunyi if they want to receive systematic training, similar to the "2034 Cup Primary School Football Conference", Guizhou Division is basically composed of youth training echelons in these two cities. The players from Guizhou who are more familiar to domestic fans, such as Wang Song, Xie Pengfei, Fan Yunlong, Yi Teng, Wei Jian and Tang Yuan, are all from Guiyang, and only Chen Zhongliu is from Duyun.

(In 2021, Fan Yunlong and other Guizhou Chinese Super League players once returned to Guiyang together and played charity matches with left-behind children)

On the other hand, even in Guiyang, many seedlings who want to take the road of football in recent years will choose to leave when they are young. For example, after leaving the famous school Guiyang Experimental Second Primary School with the most professional players, many children go to other provinces after graduating from primary school in order to pursue their football dreams.

Therefore, although Rongjiang County has a certain football foundation, Qiandongnan Prefecture also has a local campus football tradition strong team such as Kaili No. 1 Middle School, and has won some results in provincial competitions. But in terms of overall level and talent training, let alone nationwide, it is not considered to be able to fight in Guizhou Province.

However, this does not mean that the village is "overhyped and useless", as others say. Professional football and amateur football are indeed two completely different things, but they are not completely unconnected, and they are not something that has to be pitted against each other.

In fact, although we often say that the foundation of Chinese football is weak, there have been many low-level amateur events in recent years. Taking Guangdong as an example, Foshan has an inter-village (100 villages) football tournament, which has been held for five times and has more than 50 teams participating; Taiping Town in Qingyuan City has a "Shengshi New Year Cup" that has been held for more than seven years, and there is also a "Qinglian Cup" seven-a-side football tournament in Qingxing District, where the champion will participate in the city competition as a representative, and the city champion will play in the "Super Cup" in Guangdong Province, which can be regarded as a small pyramid of the amateur league.

More grassroots, grassroots villages in Wuchuan, Xuwen, Suixi and Potou in Zhanjiang City have spontaneously organized and self-financed events such as the "Spring Festival Cup" and "New Year Cup", which have become part of the local New Year festival.

There is no fire in these, so many people don't know about it. Rongjiang County, where the village super is located, also had large and small football events before, and the on-site audience was also very small, until this year, it was not until this year that it vigorously built IP to become the king of traffic.

However, packaging or hype does not mean that it is a derogatory term. Amateur football has finally made a popular brand, which is certainly a good thing for the mass base of the sport. It is possible that more people will participate in other competitions that already exist, and it can be expected that more places will learn similar operations, at least leading to more stadiums and more people's playing opportunities.

The value of soil is never determined by which tree grows the tallest, but how many branches it can make flourish. No one expects children playing with sand to solve physics problems, but maybe one of them will be interested and step into the door of science in the future.

Regardless of the national impact, it can be seen that governments at all levels want to make football and sports a business card in Guizhou, closely integrated with tourism promotion. As long as this path continues, there will be more interested children and new participants. Even if it is destined to be impossible to maintain the current popularity, it is good for Qiandongnan and even Guizhou football, which has a good foundation and weak youth training.

Of course, there is another possibility. Traffic swept in and rushed away, chasing the next hot spot that would always be, and the internet quickly lost its memory again.

And even then, wouldn't it make any sense?

[Maybe, it doesn't need any meaning]

A few years ago, I passed by a small country town in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. On the soccer field outside the village, a mixed primary school student match is taking place, with hundreds of onlookers besides parents and even a local TV station.

I liked to be lively and curious, and I chatted in English with two uncles who watched with relish on the sidelines. When I lamented that you really love football here, no wonder there are so many stars in the national team now, one of them corrected: "They are professionally trained, we are just hobbies, there is no direct relationship." We just have fun playing and watching and that's enough. ”

This was somewhat shocking to me at the time.

Because when we talk about the gap with football powerhouses, we often mention how many perfect youth training systems they have, how many low-level stadiums with full spectators, and how many amateur competitions of all ages. Habitually, they will unconsciously associate the mass base with the level of the level, but forget that the height of the overall level is only the result of natural formation, not the goal.

Village Chao, in essence, is just a group of ordinary people, playing football in their spare time selling fish and meat, driving excavators and doing odd jobs, and then packaged with local ethnic culture and gourmet tourism, and pushed to the general public. Whether the person who plays the ball plays well or not, whether the person watching the ball can understand it, these are not important, to put it bluntly, it is a liveliness.

Just like when you go to the temple fair to catch up, you don't need to be really proficient in opera singing books and singing tones; Go to Zibo to eat barbecue, and no one expects to become the fifth major cuisine outside of Sichuan, Lu, Guangdong and Huaiyang. Professional football cannot learn anything from the competitive level or organization of the village super league, and the village super does not have to carry more significance of "Chinese football".

Fan Zhiyi said: "I hope that the village super is still stepping on 1.5, and it is good not to upgrade to version 2.0, because it is very pure." Or a purely spontaneous football league. "And any purely spontaneous physical activity starts with physical fitness or a hobby.

We often talk too much about meaning, but in fact, many things do not make sense, and even Nietzsche said that life is meaningless. But this does not mean perfunctory. Take work seriously, enjoy life happily, even in vain it will not be empty.

Just like professional football and amateur "village super". Life should have chasing the ball, and these excitement are enough. Any little more positivity is a surprise.