Bad Left Foot

It's no secret that Indonesia's football team is bad. Let's face it. It's almost embarrassing.

How many times do you hear people say: “out of 230 million of people, we could not even find 11 men who can play football?”

Well guess what.
China has the same problem. Are you watching the olympics and being amazed by how the Chinese athletes are literally mining the gold medals? Oh yes. But not in football.

Football is one sport that is popular in China but also frustrates them. They just can't get their team off the ground. Their other athletes may dominates the world arena, but their football team is not among them.

If Indonesia can't find good players among 230 million, China can't find them in 1.3 billion.

Why? They certainly have the money, so that can't be the main reason. Furthermore, their women's team did better in the olympics despite the fact that the women players are paid a hundredth or less than the men's.

So what's the problem?

Here's what we read in the paper:

“Many Chinese sports analysts and scholars point to endemic corruption within the (Chinese football) association as one root cause of the sport's ill.”

Hmm... Sounds familiar.

Apparently, when it comes to football, we don't walk alone.

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International Herald Tribune, August 15, 2008, page 19.