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TV station dumps top Chinese soccer league after brawl

China’s top domestic soccer matches have been bumped off national TV, partly because of on-field fighting at a recent game, with reports comparing some players with “martial arts” experts.

Jiang Heping, head of sports for CCTV — China’s government-run broadcaster — has said he’d prefer to show foreign games. He has accused some players in the China Super League of lacking “professional ethics” following an on-field scuffle last week between clubs from Beijing and the neighboring city of Tianjin.

Angry fans also attacked the bus of the visiting Tianjin team after the match.

Dong Hua, spokesman for the Chinese Football Association, yesterday dismissed the fracas and said it was part of “fierce competition” as the season nears the end.

“But we have rules and we’ll deal with everything according to the rules,” Dong said.

His opinion was challenged by a recent headline in the Beijing Evening News, which asked: “When will Chinese soccer stop bringing shame?”

The China News Agency likened Super League games to “a Kungfu movie” and some players to “martial arts heroes.”

“The state of Chinese soccer at the moment makes everyone feel bitter,” Jiang told the Titan sports newspaper. “If it goes on like this, it’s in danger of being thoroughly destroyed.”

The state-run sports machine, which produced 51 Olympic gold medals three months ago, has failed to produce a single marquee soccer player. The hallmark of the government-run Super League has been chronic mismanagement, match-fixing scandals and on-field violence.

“In football, the issue of violence is always present,” said Rowan Simons, an Englishman and 20-year resident of China, who has worked as a TV analyst in China.

“China is not unusual in player fights. But it does seem to be more endemic here,” he said.

Simons said developing top socccer players was more difficult than finding Olympic gold medalists.

“Many of the Olympic sports are minority sports. It’s possible to manufacture world champions in those sports. Football is the world’s most popular game and the competition is fierce,” he said.

The country of 1.3 billion is No. 98 in the world rankings, just ahead of the island nation of Barbados (pop. 280,000).

“The Chinese have tried to replicate the elite level of football they see in Europe without seeing that underneath it is a huge infrastructure of community clubs which have been there for generations,” Simons said.

“You can’t create an elite model of football without a grassroots model. The Chinese just don’t have the raw number of people involved in the game to produce a competitive team at the national level,” he said.
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