Football in China

The current state of Chinese football

The above occurred at China's national sports meeting, it is probably quite an accurate decryption of the state of Chinese football. As you are probably aware the Chinese do not have the best of reputations in football but just how long will this reputation follow them? Last year the Chinese super league welcomed players such as Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba whom were playing alongside one another for Shanghai Shenhua. After 6 months of being there, Drogba only managed to drag the team from 13th to 9th place with 8 goals in 11 games , and Anelka maintained his impeccable reputation of being a lazy french bastard(just in case anyone forgot about the strikes in the 2010 WC) with 3 goals in 22 appearances.

It's not all doom and gloom

They currently have a couple of initiatives going to stimulate the growth of this sport within their country. One of them is could Vision China which is an attempt to set Chinese football standards as the highest in Asia. 

"At present, it is a 10-year plan, during which China wants to become a superpower in Asian football and rank in the top 20 in the world"

Not exactly achieved yet considering the state of its national team when compared to that of South Korea and Japan. Furthermore, North Korea managed to qualify for the world cup whereas the Chinese national team will be watching at home. However, if the Chinese business tycoons keep chucking ridiculous sums of money at some of the big names in football, it won't be too long til the next generation are nurtured within a football loving culture. When you think about, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, there's bound to be one or two Chinese Messi's lurking out there(but then again, there are countries like India whom seem to be athletically retarded).

My experience in Changzhou

Upon arriving in Changzhou I was pretty keen on playing some football, and after a week I managed to meet up with people through facebook for a quick 5-a-side kick-about. Needless to say, the level over here is a bit of a joke compared to England, but when surrounded by the right people, you can get some decent games going. There doesn't seem to be too much 11-a-side activity, and the 5-a-side's I usually play tend to mainly be with laowai(what the Chinese call us foreigners). Most of the locals who play here seem to be around 30 years old and up. This further illustrates the issue that most Chinese youngsters are simply not interested by the sport.

Shopping for football supplies in China

In terms of purchasing any football equipment, if you walk into a Nike or Adidas store, at the very best, they will have a Bayern Munich or Chelsea shirt on display, but it pretty much stops there. There's a wonderful website called taobao which sells everything and anything (you just need to know the pinyin for the item you want). I managed to purchase a 2012/13 Ajax away kit on it(not because I support the team or anything, just because the kit is awesome) for 88RMB which works out at around 9GBP(pretty sure it's fake but can't complain as I can't tell the difference). I haven't been having as much success with food shopping though, I can't seem to find creme fraiche anywhere in this country.