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Paul McNamara

The fact that more than half of the 16 Chinese Super League clubs appear in the current standings with asterisks next to their names is illustrative that domestic football on the mainland is hardly in rude health.
Nine teams, including champions Shanghai Port, started the season with combined deductions of 59 points for various levels of match-fixing, gambling and corruption.
Beneath the darkness, a brighter picture is emerging; one that has fans in the country tentatively optimistic that their national team will reach the 2030 World Cup, after six straight failures since China’s lone finals appearance in 2002.
Forward Wang Yudong, the 19-year-old poster boy of a talented and likeable emerging generation, has four goals in 11 games for Zhejiang FC, all of them directly contributing to points earned for his team.
At just 22, Xiang Yuwang is captaining Chongqing Tonglianglong, the newly-promoted club whose sound form, coupled with others’ misdeeds, has them second in the embryonic table.
The 20-year-old, 1.89-metres (6ft 2in) centre-back Peng Xiao has featured nine times for Shandong Taishan, while at Chengdu Rongcheng, the 22-year-old left-back Hu Hetao has started all of the runaway leaders’ 10 victories and one draw.

Wang, Xiang, Peng and Hu were all key figures in the tournament this year that supplied legitimate hope over the prospects of China emerging from the doldrums that have been their habitat since they reached the final of their own Asian Cup in 2004.
In January’s AFC U23 Asian Cup, China did not concede once in games against Australia, Iraq, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Vietnam en route to reaching a final where they ultimately ran aground against Japan.
There is further encouragement from the ongoing AFC U17 Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia, where China beat Qatar 2-0 on Tuesday to advance to the quarter-finals and book their spot at this year’s U17 World Cup, a tournament they last reached in 2005.
“Nobody imagines China will be competing with Japan or South Korea soon, but it is commonly expected that they could get back to being a top-eight team in Asia, which is enough to qualify for the expanded World Cup,” William Bi, a mainland China journalist and consultant, said.
Currently the 15th-placed Asian team in the Fifa global standings and 94th overall, China have looming opportunities to improve their standing. It is a measure of the country’s enduring selling power that China have been invited to add some intrigue to this year’s inaugural Fifa Asean Cup in September and October.
At the beginning of next year they will compete in the Asian Cup finals, where it is expected that an infusion of youth will inspire a performance far removed from the last edition in 2024, when a rotten, joyless China side was eliminated at the group stage without scoring a goal.
Wang, who earned his first cap in March last year, is sure to be a prominent figure in the Saudi Arabian competition.
“He’s probably China’s best young player, although he’s considered young only in age, not in experience,” Bi said. “He’s been a key player in the senior team for a while.
“It’s generally thought that this [2000s-born] generation are far better than the generation born in the 1990s, which was one of the worst in history.”

A country of 1.4 billion people beating one that boasts a population of around 185,000 would not normally be cause for celebration. It was noteworthy, nonetheless, that in new head coach Shao Jiayi’s first match in charge in March, China overcame Curacao 2-0, after the tiny Caribbean island qualified for this summer’s World Cup.
Not that Chinese fans will be legally watching Curacao playing Germany, Ecuador and Ivory Coast in North America, as it stands, after state broadcaster CCTV refused to pay Fifa’s reported US$300 million asking price for television rights.
Although Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, did not visit Beijing to try to broker a deal, after the possibility was mooted last week, the global governing body’s general secretary Mattias Grafstrom, and Arsene Wenger, the chief of global football development, met on Wednesday with Chinese officials to try to reach an agreement, in addition to staging talks about youth development.
World football wants China involved in its party and the country appears increasingly ready to put on its glad rags and join in the fun.


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China’s emerging football generation rising to the occasion gives fans glimmer of hope

Forward Wang Yudong (left), who plays for Zhejiang FC, is the 19-year-old poster boy of a talented and likeable emerging generation. Photo: Imaginechina

Hu Hetao (right) of China played an important role for the team at the AFC U23 Asian Cup. Photo: Xinhua

Supporters backed the young players at the AFC U23 Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia. Photo: Xinhua

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Vincent Lau on his way to Asian Games time-trial bronze in 2023. Photo: Xinhua

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Sport

Football

Young players, who reached AFC U23 Asian Cup final, are playing pivotal roles in their club teams’ strong positions in the domestic standings


Young players, who reached AFC U23 Asian Cup final, are playing pivotal roles in their club teams’ strong positions in the domestic standings.


Wang Yudong

Fifa

Asian Football Confederation (AFC)

China’s emerging football generation rising to the occasion gives fans glimmer of hope

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Young players, who reached AFC U23 Asian Cup final, are playing pivotal roles in their club teams’ strong positions in the domestic standings

Young players, who reached AFC U23 Asian Cup final, are playing pivotal roles in their club teams’ strong positions in the domestic standings