By Mark Baber
September 12 – China has finished top of the Asian Games medal table every year since 1990, and in the last edition in Guangzhou picked up 199 gold medals – three times as many as runners up South Korea, but Asia’s most populous country remains a rank outsider in the football.
China is expected to totally dominate the medals tables in the pool, in table tennis, gymnastics, badminton and shooting in Incheon, South Korea,
However, in soccer China’s development lags sadly behind, a fact that hasn’t escaped, China’s top sports official Liu Peng, head of the State General Administration of Sports who told local media: “We have to recognise that the development of sport in our country is not balanced, the overall level of the three ‘big ball’ sports that the masses love, particularly soccer, are stagnant and even falling back.
“The masses are not satisfied that there is a sharp contrast with China’s outstanding results in (other) competitive sport.”
The Chinese men’s team is drawn in a three-team group with North Korea and Pakistan and play their opening game against the Koreans on Monday. The women are drawn with Japan, Jordan and Chinese Taipei and play against Japan on Monday.
Although the Chinese teams should make it through to the second round, a big performance by the under-23 teams is needed for China start to realise expectations. The extent of the catching up required at national level can be seen in the odds for next year’s AFC Asian Cup, where China lags well behind favorites Japan, Australia, South Korea and Iran, and even behind Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates, a country with less than 1% of the population of China.
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