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Mike Chan

Football in China is being run by people without the skill to do so, as those with talent sit on the sidelines, former international Li Weifeng has said in a withering assessment of the game in the country.
Speaking during a live stream on social media, Li, who stopped playing in 2015, said the decision to axe head coach Bora Milutinovic, who guided China to their only Fifa World Cup appearance to date in Japan and South Korea in 2002, was a classic case in point.
Rather than being rewarded with a contract extension, the Serbian tactician was cut by the Chinese Football Association after the tournament, where his team lost all three group matches against Costa Rica, Brazil and Turkey.
A long-serving national team member from 1998 to 2011, Li said that in the environment at the time, those with talent who existed outside the established system could not secure their positions on professional merit alone.
The problem according to Li was “not in the individual abilities of players and coaches,” but rather that social connections were a significant influencing factor in who rose to the top.

“Without breaking down these barriers, no matter how many managers, coaching teams, or player rosters are changed, the current state of the industry cannot be altered,” Li reportedly said.
Asked about the departure of Milutinovic, Li briefly paused for a few seconds, before saying: “Bora is too capable, and he has too many ideas of his own.”
While most Chinese social media users appeared to have accepted the distorted culture and suggested it happened in almost every business and sector, there were still some who were hoping for a change.
“We won’t change if we don’t acknowledge it, we won’t improve if we don’t change,” one commentator said. “Those senior figures within the industry are accustomed to and benefiting from established patterns – they have become the biggest obstacle to reform.”
Others said the 2002 incident was the “biggest scandal” in the history of the Chinese national football team, and that Milutinović was “really tricked” back then.
Last week, after Xu Jiayin, founder of the Evergrande Group, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the history surrounding football club Guangzhou Evergrande and the impact they had on Chinese football again became a hot topic.
Li revealed an incident when Evergrande, then still playing in China League One, tried to lure him away from Suwon Bluewings in South Korea by faxing him a contract that left the salary column blank.
The former Chinese captain, who did not sign the contract, said he was told “to fill in anything, and it would take effect as soon as I did”.
It was estimated that Xu had invested a total of 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in football projects from 2010 to 2011, of which 14 billion yuan was given to the Evergrande team, with three billion yuan more spent on the Evergrande Football School.
The annual pre-tax salary of the Evergrande squad in 2018 was also reportedly as high as 1.45 billion yuan.
Some social media users suggested that, while Chinese football’s decline began many years ago, it was timely that someone from outside the current system was willing to raise and expose the long-standing issues, such as ultra-high salaries keeping the players in the country instead of playing overseas, and the distorted culture of driving the more able people away.
Although one user summed up the feelings of many, writing: “The issue of social circles isn’t something that happened overnight, don’t expect him to change it all by himself.”


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Li Weifeng (right) played for his country for 11 years and was a member of the only squad to reach a World Cup. Photo: AP

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Sport

Football

China

Former international Li Weifeng takes aim at the ‘social influence’ he says stops best people from being in position to improve things


Former international Li Weifeng takes aim at the ‘social influence’ he says stops best people from being in position to improve things.


Chinese Super League

China Evergrande Group

China football talent left sat on sidelines as game is ruined, ex-captain Li says

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Former international Li Weifeng takes aim at the ‘social influence’ he says stops best people from being in position to improve things

Former international Li Weifeng takes aim at the ‘social influence’ he says stops best people from being in position to improve things