{"id":2572,"date":"2010-02-23T23:29:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T15:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2010-03-22T02:53:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T18:53:49","slug":"bad-news-blades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/bad-news-blades\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad News Blades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After being busted for match-fixing, it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/worldfootball\/clubfootball\/news\/newsid=1172760.html\" target=\"_blank\">confirmed today<\/a> by the Chinese Football Association that Chengdu&#8217;s local team, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chengdu_Blades\" target=\"_blank\">The Blades<\/a>, will be ejected from China&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chinese_Super_League\" target=\"_blank\">premier league<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>After enduring years of crushing disappointment, Chinese football fans are used to it, as the national team has faltered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danwei.org\/newspapers\/chinese_soccer_good_bye_to_200.php\" target=\"_blank\">over<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danwei.org\/newspapers\/chinese_soccer_good_bye_to_200.php\" target=\"_blank\">over<\/a> again. Even though China is home to a massive number of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2008\/08\/04\/sports\/olympics\/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html\" target=\"_blank\">world class athletes<\/a> and football is among the country&#8217;s most popular sports, they couldn&#8217;t <a href=\"http:\/\/soccernet.espn.go.com\/report?id=233371&amp;cc=5901\" target=\"_blank\">beat Qatar<\/a> to qualify for the World Cup. Well, maybe that&#8217;s not being fair &#8211; they qualified for the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2002_FIFA_World_Cup\" target=\"_blank\">Korean World Cup<\/a> in 2002, even though they didn&#8217;t win any games or <em>score any goals<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s Happening Here?<\/h2>\n<p>Chengdu&#8217;s local team has been mired by as much bad press and luck as the national team, but locals seem barely seem to bat an eye. China might have captured the most gold medals in 2008&#8217;s Summer Olympics, but their national soccer team (nicknamed the &#8220;National Foot&#8221;, ??)\u00a0 can&#8217;t seem to win a damn thing. Last summer they were ranked 108th in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/worldfootball\/ranking\/\" target=\"_blank\">world rankings<\/a>, barely beating the Sudanese national team but not quite as good as Rwanda. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/China_PR_national_football_team\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a> provides a few answers for the question of how things could have gone so wrong:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sub-par technical standards in training, selection and preparation<\/li>\n<li>lack of leadership and vision from the <a title=\"Chinese Football Association\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chinese_Football_Association\">Chinese Football Association<\/a><\/li>\n<li>incompetent organization and government interference<\/li>\n<li>corruption, especially in the refereeing of matches<\/li>\n<li>low participation and neglect of grassroots and junior football  (according to the 2006 FIFA Big Count, China had 708,754 amateur and  youth players from a population of 1.3 billion(ratio of 1:1834) compared  to 738,800 from 41 million(ratio of 1:55) in <a title=\"Football  in England\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Football_in_England\">England<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>over-reliance on foreign coaches (mainly eastern European, <a title=\"Serbia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Serbia\">Serbian<\/a>)  signals lack of domestic coach development<\/li>\n<li>unable to cope with the pressure from the Chinese football press and  media<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What do you think?<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2581\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2581\" style=\"width: 262px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2581\" title=\"blades\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/blades.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"272\" height=\"153\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/blades.jpg 272w, https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/blades-128x72.jpg 128w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 272px) 100vw, 272px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2581\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Blades play Chelsea and get pounded, losing 7-0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to imagine how things can get much worse when the tiny Arab peninsula of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Qatar\" target=\"_blank\">Qatar<\/a> is an insurmountable obstacle for China&#8217;s national team.<\/p>\n<p>What are you thoughts on how China can remedy its national football program? Are you sad to see the Blades get demoted, or do they deserve it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After being busted for match-fixing, it was confirmed today by the Chinese Football Association that Chengdu&#8217;s local team, The Blades, will be ejected from China&#8217;s premier league.<\/p>\n<p>After enduring years of crushing disappointment, Chinese football fans are used to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,88],"tags":[141],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bad News Blades - Chengdu Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/bad-news-blades\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bad News Blades - Chengdu Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After being busted for match-fixing, it was confirmed today by the Chinese Football Association that Chengdu&#039;s local team, The Blades, will be ejected from China&#039;s premier league.  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