Football in China consists of Association football (Chinese: 足球; pinyin: zuqiu) as well as the China national football team. Football has been one of the most well supported sports in China, since it was introduced in the early 1900s. The national governing body is the Chinese Football Association (CFA). Hong Kong and Macau have separate leagues.
The professional league is marred by match-fixing, illegal betting, and violence on and off the pitch[1], which the Chinese government has said would take a long time to fix.[2]
On December 21, 2009, China was awarded FIFA's Development Award after successfully implementing a new nationwide grassroots football program.[3][4]
The Men's National Team is ranked 77th in the world, and Women's National Team is ranked 13th.
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The Chinese Football Association Super League (Chinese: 中国足球协会超级联赛), commonly known as Chinese Super League (中超联赛) or CSL, currently known as the Pirelli Chinese Football Association Super League, is the highest tier of professional association football in China, operating under the auspices of the Chinese Football Association (CFA).
The Super League was created by the rebranding of the former top division Chinese Football Association Jia-A League in 2004. While the league originally consisted of 12 teams, now 16 teams compete in it. The title has been won by five teams: Shenzhen Jianlibao, Dalian Shide, Shandong Luneng, Changchun Yatai and Beijing Guoan. The current Super League champion is Shandong Luneng.
The China PR national football team is governed by the Chinese Football Association (CFA). The team was founded in 1924 in the Republic of China under the auspices of the China Football Association and joined FIFA in 1931. Following the Chinese Civil War, the CFA was formed in the newly founded People's Republic of China. They remained affiliated with FIFA until 1958, when they withdrew, but they rejoined in 1979.
China have been runners-up at the Asian Cup twice: in 1984 and 2004. Although China failed to score a goal in their first World Cup appearance in 2002, losing all their matches, just qualifying for the tournament has been considered the greatest accomplishment in their football history.
Football initiatives have been developed, including Vision China - a part FIFA Vision Asia - which has reached the highest standard in Asia and the quarter final of the men's competition in the 2008 Olympics. The programme covers marketing, development, footballer training, coach and referee training, sports medicine, competitions, media, and fans. It also includes assessments on Chinese football, planning matches and monitoring them. Goal Project for China, part of FIFA Goal Project invested in China to help build the new headquarters of the CFA. [5]
Football is covered by the Chinese media. National competitions are generally televised on CCTV-5, the sports channel. Guangdong Television reserves rights, however, for the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League. Since 1996, CCTV-5 has weekly programmes televising live games in the Italian Serie A and German Bundesliga to Football Night (足球之夜), a programme dedicated to anything football. Shanghai's Dongfang Sports channel also has regular football coverage.
Peer-to-peer sharing programs such as PPLive and PPStream stream live football in all of the world's major competitions, and is a wide source of football programming worldwide, even for non-Chinese speaking people.
Because of the low level of interest exhibited in the domestic football league, Chinese football fans, numbered in the hundreds of millions, often turn to major European football competitions, associating themselves most prominently with teams in the English Premier League, the Italian Serie A and the German Bundesliga, the three leagues who have established large fan bases in China. Chinese players going to play in European leagues attracts massive media attention, and as a result also gains a large following. Prominent examples include Sun Jihai, formerly of Manchester City; Zheng Zhi, who played for Celtic; Shao Jiayi, formerly of 1860 Munich, now of MSV Duisburg; and Yang Chen, formerly of Eintracht Frankfurt.
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