China, India, Pakistan, USA and Indonesian players and the Premier league

There's no country in the world that's good at men's football that don't have it as their number one priority. There are other sports, as China has shown in the Olympics (or Britain in cycling), where you can just put shitloads of funding into it, and you'll get success, because most sports aren't well-funded enough even to allow people to do it as their full-time job. In football, everyone has a fully-developed, massively funded system in place to produce players, so to try to break into that when all of your most talented sports people would rather be playing American football, basketball, badminton or cricket is a tough ask.

As someone pointed out above, people have been predicting the USA and China to win the World Cup "in the next 20 years" for decades and they're not even close. The reality is that Ivory Coast, Ghana or Senegal have each created more world class players than all of those countries combined, and yet no-one ever predicts them to win the World Cup. They've got a far bigger chance than any of the countries mentioned.
 
Seeing how cricket has changed with India as the dominant nation, I don't want them near football, and fortunately it won't happen.
 
For me, China's national football team has suffered from the aspirations of the Super League trying to be a major power and importing big name players like Drogba, Anelka, Tevez, Hulk, Oscar, etc, rather than trying to develop players. In the late 90's and early 00's, China had quite a decent national team, they qualified for their first World Cup in 2002, reached the final of the Asian Cup in 2004, and gave established teams like France and Germany tough games, albeit in friendlies. They defeated France and held Germany and Brazil to draws, in stark contrast to losing 6-0 in a friendly at home to Wales in 2018. At that time China had players playing in the Premier League and Bundesliga (Jihai and Li Tie at Everton, Shao Jiayi at Cottbus) now Wu Lei playing for Espanyol is the only Chinese player playing outside China. The strongest teams in Asia at the moment are Japan, South Korea, Australia and Iran, they all have something in common; they produce players and export them. China doesn't do this. Instead, with the backing of the Chinese government, they've tried to create a rival to the Premier League by signing big name overseas players like the one's I mentioned earlier with big wages, which has also tied down Chinese players. If you're on big money, there is little incentive to go abroad and improve. The Chinese Super League bubble looks like it has burst. Jiangsu Suning have folded, they had some decent Brazilian players who have gone elsewhere now. There is a belief that the football novelty in the government has worn off and the heavy financial backing will ease. Big name signings are expected to reduce. If that's true, it could be a good thing. It might mean more focus on developing young players. In the AFC Champions League all the Chinese teams involved played their youth teams against senior opposition. A sign of the direction Chinese football is taking? That's what they need to do, because China are very weak at the moment.

Its a bit of myth that India doesn't care about football. The areas of India where the Portuguese had a strong influence are very football passionate. The derby between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan used to get crowds of over 100,000. The Indian Super League has helped Indian football a lot and has risen the profile of the game, hence why CFG aquired Mumbai City. It's a fertile market. Indonesian football has been really hurt by corruption and terrible mismanagement. Indonesia were banned by FIFA for over a year because of it. If you want to see a bent match, watch this:

 
Yennaris and Browning are only part Chinese and both played for the English youth teams so native Chinese players is actually only 5.

Zesh Rehman was also brought up in England and through the English systems playing for England youth, so I’d say there’s been zero really from Pakistan.
 
Maybe China will develop into a world power footballing wise, I remember back in the late 70s their national team toured England(they might have played WBA..)and there was talk back then that they simply had to explode onto the footballing world, but as of yet its not really happened, maybe a World Cup?

The South Korean was a guy by the name of Cha Bum-kun, I believe his son ended up playing for Celtic during his career, although I think he was a defender. He kind of played in a false number nine role back before anyone really did that. The closest City player I have seen is if you could picture a goal scoring David Silva, had the same kind of grace as Silva and while he scored a good amount of goals, pretty much everything flowed through him, his assists must have been to an insane level, I should add that around the same kind of time I had the chance to see Maradona in Naples, so that's how highly I rated this guy.


Cha Bum Kun played the majority of his career in Germany for Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayer Leverkusen.

South Koreans had to do military service as well and he also went to University so it was until his mid 20’s until people knew about him.

Had a great career in Germany and was known as a top player as you wouldn’t have got any Korean nation players back then playing anywhere but South Korea.

No idea why Bayern or another top European team picked him up from Germany. Different times I guess, less TV and less crazy money to induce moves.

People forget Zola didn’t play in Serie A until he was 23. He was kicking around the amateur leagues in Sardinia. God knows how the Cagliari scouting system missed him!
 
No idea why Bayern or another top European team picked him up from Germany. Different times I guess, less TV and less crazy money to induce moves.
I can explain that! Bayer the chemical company at the time where in the process of pumping serious money into the club(not that they don't clearly still provide large amount of funding), they had been an amateur team until the late 60s, Leverkusen isn't itself very large, think of somewhere the size of Bolton, largely a suburb of Cologne. They didn't play in the top flight until 1979... to give you an idea I think the first game I saw they had a capacity of 13,000 at their ground it was mostly open, standing, reminded me a lot of Plough Line, maybe a little smaller and by the time I left Germany three years later they had nearly doubled that and it was all seater, better, although smaller than anywhere in England at the time.... Anyway Bayer gave them so much money that they could compete with Bayern which is why in large part the majority of East Germany's better players ended up there and not in Munich when Germany was unified. I should add that Bayer, pretty much own the whole town of Leverkusen so its more than simply a rich owner ploughing money into a club.
 
Think its a cultural thing. While football is big as a spectator sport in most of these countries, its probably not picked up on until later in life. What I mean is, in countries like Brazil, Argentina, and even UK, football is a part of life and many grow up watching a famous local team and playing football with mates from an early age. In counties like India its cricket. In USA, its baseball or american football.
You omitted basketball which is also very popular in China.
The interest in football in China isn't as great as people imagine.
I think golf is probably more popular than football in China.
Ping pong and pool/snooker are very prominent games there.
 
You omitted basketball which is also very popular in China.
The interest in football in China isn't as great as people imagine.
I think golf is probably more popular than football in China.
Ping pong and pool/snooker are very prominent games there.
Whiff Whaff, surely?
 
Instead of importing has been players and managers, China and maybe the others too need to send their own young coaches to Europe and S. America to learn the trade. Then they have a chance of developing decent players. They might consider sending young players to our academies too.
Opportunity knocks for CFG and others?
 

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