a humiliating 7-0 loss to World Cup rivals Japan
Uuuh. Maybe China considers Japan a rival, but Japan wouldn’t consider China at all. If an actual world-class team like Japan has a rival, it would be Korea. Both teams obviously well above China in rankings.
You could consider Australia a rival, but honestly the two countries and the fans love each other too much.
Similar with the UK and Germany. The UK considers Germany their big rival. Germany considers the UK… a team.
The UK doesn’t compete in international football, the constituent countries of it do. Although of them, only England is even occasionally able to challenge Germany
Sorry, you’re right. I meant England. vs. Germany.
“Gee, UK, why do you get so many teams?”
I honestly can’t think of a way to rephrase “we invented international football” to fit the “no skins” original, so this acknowledgement of the reference will have to do instead
I wonder if there’s ever been a push to combine like they do in rugby… every 4th world cup they do a UK team.
I suppose there’s the Olympic team? Although that doesn’t include the republic of Ireland, and Northern Irish people can choose which one to compete for
I think part of the issue is that there’s far less parity between the countries in football compared to rugby. All four teams are always at or near the top level in rugby, whereas only England is typically good at football, so a Lions equivalent would basically just be the England team again
Robertson may have been able crack the squad, Decland Rice has played for both so there is certainly some players that make the team.
Japan are not world-class. They’re a solid team, but despite being ranked in the top 20 they’re probably still considered weaker than many of the teams below them.
With that said, I always have a soft spot for countries that push players that play domestic football outside of Europe and in their own country. I’ve been on a Japan kick since Yu Hirakawa joined Bristol City on loan.
Aus is world class for soccer?
No. But they are at a decent level. And they are around the same level as Japan and South Korea. And all three of them are significantly above China in the sport.
Yeah. Japan’s usually going to be number 1 in Asia, but we all go for whoever of those three teams is still in and usually two of them are in the WC. China’s just insignificant. I think even NZ is higher than them and they’re a low-population nation obsessed with rugby.
git gud
can’t. they’re maiden-less.
git gud
Clearly a skill issue here…
Men’s USA team fans: “first time?”
Huh, i’m surprised there’s one sport that china suck so much they get outright humiliated on qualifier, considering they won so much gold on Olympic
Well, when your country lists every case of illegal doping as “food contamination” and the Olympics commit smiles and nods, it gets easier to get gold medals.
china is not good at a lot of stuff. they won so many golds in the olympics because they absolutely dominate a few categories like table tennis, diving, and shooting. they also have many sub events, not like a team sport that only nets one medal.
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Are you implying that sports aren’t popular everywhere or that everywhere is a dictatorship?
No, but governments with authoritarian tendencies, especially those with a nationalist streak, put a hard focus on international sports competitions as a matter of national pride. Starting with the Nazi German Olympics being the first televised event in human history, look at the Russian doping scandals, or how the Hungarian prime minister has a gigantic stadium in his tiny home village.
Competing in sports is okay. So is being an obsessed fan. When the government becomes an obsessed fan, that’s when the weirdness starts.
President Xi Jinping, reportedly a big football fan, once expressed his hopes to turn China into a “global football superpower”.
It is not okay to say this in an official capacity.
No I didn’t imply neither of those. Please read these articles because its a global phenomena and have been going forever:
https://hrf.org/a-history-of-sports-dictators-part-3-post-wwii-soft-power
Russia, North Korea, Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, China, and many more to name but a few. These democratically-elected human-right-loving governments heavily invest and spend out of their own pockets into national sports for two reasons: 1- Force ALL their athletes to spread national propagonda and pride of how amazing their country is. 2- Distract the oppressed confused angry youth to watch and criticize sports and athletes to distract them from the country’s corruption and human right records.
Russia waged several wars and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Dagestani people, and controlled Chechniya and all it governments, yet we see Khabib and other Dagestani UFC fighters cuddle up to Putin and Ramazan Kadyrov, when they know inside how much harm they did to their own people, but they were bought with millions of dollars. I can provide several examples showing the same exact thing with every country I mentioned. These governments intentional involvments in sporting leages have been documemted and have been happening since ever.
Preach.
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God I’m so happy there are so many jingoistic Sinophobic straight up propaganda and lies in these comments so I know exactly who has shit takes on life
Football is definitely not your sport
