Every country has a milestone in its sporting history. In the football history of the country with the world’s largest population, that milestone is dated October 7, 2001. On that day, winning over Oman by 1-0, the Chinese team won for the first time ever the right to dispute the World Championship, scheduled to take place in Korea and Japan in three months’ time. The qualification came only seven years after the Chinese football league decided, in 1994, to re-organise itself on the European model and to introduce professional football. What would appear to be the realisation of a dream pursued only in recent years is actually the outcome of a long and troubled series of events that went hand in hand with the political happenings of the last decades. Although the football movement was well-established, admittedly in crude form, early in the last century, the years from 1920 to 1980 were to prove nothing less than a calvary for the local football league. Created in 1924, the Chinese Football League joined FIFA ten years later, but strong political pressures led to its abandoning the association in full cold war. The reason was in the rivalry with Taiwan, whose acceptance in the international federation provoked immediate and indignant reactions from Mao Zedong, who peremptorily called for the Chinese team’s withdrawal from a body seen as undisguisedly anti-Communist. Curiously enough, the national leader himself actively encouraged the diffusion of sports, propounding the mental fortification of people through physical activity. But his preference for artistic gymnastics and table tennis turned out to be more of an obstacle than a driving factor for other sports. Only after the death of the prophet of the Cultural Revolution, roughly thirty years later, would China get back to the top levels of world football, making its way through the Asian qualifying rounds and seeking its own place in the sun. China joined FIFA again in 1979, with the mandatory target of qualifying for the 1982 World Championship, which was lost however to New Zealand in a play-off match. Yet the disappointment only served to rekindle China’s firm intention of becoming a world power in football. In a population of 1.3 billion, no fewer than ten million football players were vying for more visibility on the national level. But as for any rising movement under totalitarian regimes, it was necessary for the political leadership to give a minimal sign of supporting the people’s will. And so, in the wake of the grand economic reforms of the late 1980s, Deng Xiaoping offered conditional support to the movement’s development. The league could open up to professionalism, provided that hard currency be supplied by famous-brand sponsors. No sooner said than done: in 1994 a multinational tobacco company, for a change, provided close to $2 billion to be used for re-organising and institutionalising a professional championship along the lines of those held in Europe. It must be added that, not irrelevantly, those years witnessed a growing rivalry between China and Japan in striving to attain a position of moral leadership in Asia. The recent establishment in Japan of a football league (the J-League), modelled after the ones in Europe, was no small incentive for the government to follow the moves of the annoying neighbour. And so the Marlboro League disbanded the amateur teams and cancelled certain odd rules such as the automatic invalidation of all matches ending in a tie, or the assignment of bonus points to teams providing players for the national team or for goals scored on headers, or penalisations for the sending off of players. The “reformed” championship was limited to fourteen teams (twelve in the second division) and the teams were free to hire a maximum of five foreign players, although no more than three could be in the field at the same time. A hard-and-fast rule still says that goalkeepers, a traditionally weak role in Chinese football teams, must absolutely be home-grown, for the purpose of allowing young players to improve and gain experience without being barred out by foreign goalies. During the first season, the vast numbers of spectators in the stadiums and of television viewers decreed the country’s football modernisation: stadiums with sectors reserved for VIPs, commercial galleries and numbered seats become familiar, and sponsors lined up for a chance to become part of the game. Many ideas were taken from Italian football: training centres were created based on Italian youth-preparation centres, and many trainers were called from Italy to hold conferences. Local trainers established a rigid directive: every weekend at least one Italian championship game must be studied and analysed, both technically and tactically. Attracted by the chance to teach their skills, and by investors’ dollars, a flock of celebrities moved in from abroad. Dino Siani, Bobby Houghton and Gigi Lentini were tempted by Beijing more than once, sometimes making the journey and sometimes not. But the real boost for China’s collective imagination would come only from a great performance by the national team. Realising this, the League chose a promising but expensive undertaking: they called to the helm Bora Milutinovic, a globe-trotter trainer with a rock-solid background in world championship qualifications. The last four championships have always seen him in the front row, leading the teams of Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States and Nigeria. So Milutinovic accepted the rich offer and chose to seek his fifth seal under Chinese banners. He was immediately confronted by a unique situation that clashed with every fundamental rule of traditional football. Players had unsound eating habits, were tactically undisciplined, and played for themselves rather than for the team. But Milutinovic had experience at working in environments where poverty is the rule and where the sports culture has little in common with Europe’s, and results were not long in coming. After waiting for 44 years, China earned its first ticket to a World Championship. And not in a shy manner either: they scored twelve wins in the fourteen games of the qualifying rounds. Hopes turned into certainties, and the stunning success gave rise to unprecedented collective enthusiasm. As a triumphant hysteria crossed the country, the excitement locally materialised in vandalistic actions. Authorities were shocked, and European precedents come to mind as the People’s Republic came under the spell of football fanaticism. As we wait for the games to begin in Korea and Japan, the air is full of suspense. Any positive outcome of the national team in this championship will give the football movement in China a powerful impulse for future developments. And there are many (Sharp, Pepsi Cola, Canon, Mercedes, to name a few) that are studying how to anticipate the best moves in this new sports-based colonisation. Italy too, having a couple of Chinese players, has recently accepted a kind of economic compromise, consisting in testing the still unproven qualities of the best Chinese footballers and showing them off in the national showcase, in view of substantial investments that might arrive from broadcasters and papers looking to follow their heroes’ feats far from home. In this too the Chinese are following their neighbours’ example. The case of the Japanese player Hidetoshi Nakata has been a lesson; apart from the (un)doubtable talent of the Japanese champion, his enlistment by Perugia a couple of seasons back triggered the arrival of a storm of journalists from the land of the Rising Sun, ready to report emphatically on Nakata’s exploits, which helped to pull the Umbrian team into safe waters in the Italian championship. Perhaps not many know that there was a considerable economic fallout in the Italian region of Umbria, having the club wisely linked the admission ticket to the tourist promotion of Perugia, a city with an enormous wealth of artistic and cultural resources. By coming to Perugia, Japanese tourists visiting Italy would combine business with pleasure: they would admire and voice their support for a man who had become a living national monument and they would see a historical centre of rare beauty and interest. So many signs, either well-defined or in evolution, point to China as the future Mecca of world football: there are economic resources for importing qualified professionals; the national team is supported by the world’s largest following; the players have begun to absorb the teachings from Europe and to understand that football can be a means of emancipation for themselves and their families in a country that in spite of everything is still mostly poor; and, as previously mentioned, the exporting abroad of some of the finer talents, whose daily sporting feats can be followed at home over the media. In conclusion, very shortly, if not immediately, China will be ready to bounce on the ball, and on the chance of a lifetime.

(trad. Interpres sas - Giussano)