I live in Beijing and have seen Chinese teams play, including the national side. There's a reason they're crap. The people here are incapable of constant creative thinking - thinking on the spot, thinking outside the box. They are taught to be attentive and do as they're told. So that's why volleyball, badminton and tennis are easier for them. The number of actions you need to master it are limited, the space is small, and you can use pre-set forms of attack or defence. Once you master them completely you are nearly unbeatable. The Chinese are good at this because that's what their lives are for the most part. "Here's how you do it, now do it a million times until you get it right".

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I would've agreed with you completely had it not been for the last sentence. It's true, China's training is essentially do it 100 times over and over. Maybe it was the way it was written, but I was picturing a group of soccer players inspecting a soccer ball like "wtf is this shit" and hearing the whistle and thinking the apocalypse has arrived or something. I do agree, they are much better at structured sports than not, just that I think with training they can be taught to do well in that field too. It's not that their brains are incapable of creative thinking, just that they are trained a different way.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Football is infinitely more complex, and the complexity is rooted in its fluid and continuous nature. Net sports are played in frames, and the space much more limited. This in turn limits the number of possible things you can do. There's a reason the Chinese have got so much better in some sports and not in others. They spend just as much time and just as much effort on football, and yet China can't produce a winning football team. The Chinese league is also riddled with corruption and match-fixing. What does that tell you? Basketball is the closest China has gotten to mastering the more creative sports, but even that is limited. The repetitive back and forth and small playing area render it rather simple. Look at Hong Kong for comparison, where you find excellent Rugby players, because people in Hong Kong are much better at thinking like western people, which is a huge advantage when it comes to that kind of sport. The Olympic sports are dominated by ones the Chinese can master and dominate. All I'm saying is that they there's a reason for it!

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Sorry, I edited my comment before you replied. I'm not really sure how much "creative thinking" really goes into sports to be honest. To win you need logic and strategy. Football isn't a sport where you randomly go kicking, there is a structure to it, although looser. Maybe there is a societal influence, but Chinese Olympians are trained for a large part of their lives. If the coach wanted creative thinking, it wouldn't be too hard to make that happen.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I'm not sure you see what I'm getting at. Football is a fluid sport, with things changing constantly, and all happening in a larger space, with more pieces moving at the same time. That's why there are no fixed "plays" like in other sports. You get the ball and then have to think in the mere seconds you have what to do next, and then based on the result of that what to do next. Experience can make you better, but creativity is EVERYTHING. What I'm talking about here is not limited only to sport, it's talking about a certain mindset that is instilled in the mainland Chinese from a very young age. They're taught to believe that everything is objective and quantifiable, that everything has a standard, and that attaining the standard is EVERYTHING. In their minds, life is just a series of simple movements to be mastered and then followed rigidly

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Hmm. I get it what you're saying. I still maintain they at least know the rules of football and have an inkling of an idea of what to do, but I'll take out my downvote and delete the first comment.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Well naturally they know the rules. My mum knows the rules, doesn't mean she's any good though! What I'm talking about is an inability to play it effectively because of their method of thinking about things.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Also I have to say, the Chinese on the whole really are incapable of creative thinking. Creativity has been knocked out of the populace by years of being told what to do and what is objectively right and wrong. That's why there's so much industrial espionage, copying, intellectual property theft and whatnot. It's why the music all sounds the same and why customer service is so bad! Please do know I'm talking about the mainland here. Taiwan and HK are so different, and when you go there yo ucan see it!

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Ugh, I really wish China never become communist in the first place. With communism comes authoritarianism and everything is so strict and anything different is smothered. I don't think it'll last for long but I'd hate to see the country fail. It has such an amazing culture but its people can't flourish the way the government does. I definitely do want to see Taiwain and HK, I hear they hate Beijing a lot over there.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

oooooo yes. I haven't been to Taiwan, but I've been to HK twice, and some of them get pretty shirty when you lump them in together with the mainlanders. Most of them still talk about "China and Hong Kong", which is unthinkable on the mainland.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Why, in China are the two not really considered separated?

by Anonymous 12 years ago

of course not, haha. In China it's "one country, two systems". And that's the line EVERYONE follows...or else! haha. They also believe that HK is ever so grateful to China for liberating them from their cruel British imperialist masters. hahahaha This is also a crock

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Great discussion guys. (applause) brings tears to my eyes; no troll to ruin it :')

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Black people are terrible. Gays are even worse. Now you can have a troll to ruin the discussion.!

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Maybe because they have a billion people to choose from... like someone's ought to be good among those billion.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Please don't belittle other people's had work because of your own feelings of inadequacy.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I don't think I'm belittling it as such, just giving the true reasoning behin it. Live in China for most of your life and then come back and tell me I'm wrong. I have nothing but admiration for the Chinese athletes in question, but their sugar-coating of the reasons behind it is rather tragic.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

It's not that the Chinese aren't "creative", they just have a very different culture - often they learn by constant memorizing and perfecting. With football or any other sport requiring more than a few people and teamwork, there are a million things that can be done and changed in only a second. It's a cultural thing.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

It absolutely is a lack of creativity, it has been destroyed over the last 60 years. China relies entirely on idea stealing and industrial espionage to get ahead now. Trust me. It's NOT a cultural thing.

by Anonymous 12 years ago