Chinese football missing targets on its 2020 Action Plan

SHANGHAI: Barely weeks into the near year, Chinese football’s “2020 Action Plan” is in tatters after another international tournament failure that ended with players leaving the field in tears after losing all three games without scoring a goal.

In 2018, China’s Football Association (CFA) set a number of targets for the men’s national teams at various age levels. None have been met.

The latest failure is missing out on qualification for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. To book a ticket to Japan, China needed to finish in the top three of the Under-23 Asian Championships, under way in Thailand.

Instead, China placed last in their group with no goals and no competition points.

Other objectives that have not been achieved include reaching the semi-finals the 2019 Asian Cup, qualifying for the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups and being ranked in the top 70 by football’s international governing body.

China are 76th this week in the FIFA rankings.

This is all despite significant financial investment in recent years by Chinese Super League clubs on foreign talent and by the government at the grassroots level.

“I am not sure what is happening because China has been investing in youth football and the new generations are coming, but low quality is still a problem,” former Beijing Guoan striker Dejan Damjanovic said.

“They need to keep investing to try and send the best young players to Europe to develop. That’s the only chance for Chinese football.”

The latest setback was not completely unexpected, as China had lost eight of their previous nine games at the Under-23 championship.

But it was more painful than past failures because that group of young players had a better preparation than previous eras.

In 2017, the CFA introduced rules that forced Chinese Super League clubs to give young domestic players playing time and in 2018 they appointed an elite coach. Guus Hiddink, the former Real Madrid coach who led South Korea to the 2002 World Cup semi-finals, was tasked with leading China to Tokyo.

Hiddink was fired last September after poor results in warm-up matches.

“After five years of the country’s football revolution, one would have expected to see more tangible progress being made particularly within younger age categories,” said Simon Chadwick, professor of Sports Enterprise at Salford University who has worked on education delivery with the CFA and who writes about Chinese football.

“Hence, the country’s recent Under-23 performance does not bode well for the success of China’s strategy. It is hard for observers to conclude anything other than the country’s national teams are still under performing.”