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Australia's Harry Kewell heads the ball during their World Cup qualifier match Against China at ANZ Stadium, Sydney, Sunday, June 22, 2008. AAP Image/Dean Lewins
The ugly scenes that marred Australia’s defeat to China in the AFC U-19’s Women’s Championship were not unique. But they may have sounded the death knell for any future Chinese World Cup bid.
For too long now Chinese football has been marred by violence on and off the pitch.
Japan’s defeat of China in the Asian Cup final of 2004 sparked riots outside the Beijing Worker’s Stadium.
In 2007, an innocuous friendly hosted by English club Queens Park Rangers was abandoned by referee Dermot Gallagher after an all-in brawl left Chinese defender Zheng Tao with a broken jaw.
The melee apparently started after a Chinese player was alleged to have kicked a stricken QPR player lying prostrate on the ground.
The Chinese ended their 2008 Beijing Olympics campaign in disgrace after a 2-0 defeat to Belgium saw them finish that group-stage game with just nine men.
Defender Tan Wangsong was sent off for kicking Sebastien Pocognoli in the abdomen, before former Charlton Athletic star Zheng Zhi earned his marching orders for elbowing Jan Vertonghen in the stomach.
And the Chinese Super League has long been renowned as one of the most physical competitions in world football, with multi-game suspensions routinely handed down for violent behaviour.
What’s the source of all this on-field tension?
Call me an old-school social analyst, but I bet a jittery Communist regime hell-bent on labelling the west an “enemy” when it suits does little for China’s siege mentality.
Where does that leave any future Chinese World Cup bid?
Up the creek if you’re to believe FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter, who just last week told reporters in the United States that he would like to see the Americans host either the 2018 or 2022 finals.
That makes hosting another World Cup finals in a newly developing market unlikely in the near future.
But it also makes a trip to the People’s Republic an uncomfortable experience – as Australian U-19’s Women’s coach Alen Stajcic just discovered.
Stajcic should try taking a Japanese team to China.
From the now defunct A3 Champions Cup to the totally irrelevent East Asian Football Championship, Japanese teams are so vociferously booed in China that it’s a wonder any Japanese teams bother to turn up in the first place.
It makes a mockey of Sepp Blatter’s righteous indignation over the jeering of national anthems and the use of football matches for political point-scoring.
And verbal abuse is the least of it.
The lobbing of projectiles such as the water bottles that rained down on the Young Matildas is becoming a routine occurence in China.
The People’s Republic might be considered a sleeping giant in world football, but even a population of more than 1.3 billion does not guarantee “the Middle Kingdom” the right to host the world’s most popular sporting event.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that Chinese teams again failed en masse in this season’s Asian Champions League.
Not a single Chinese team reached the final sixteen of the tournament, despite the fact that four of them took part in the group stage.
None of this bodes well for China’s interest in eventually hosting a World Cup, with any bids looking dead in the water as it is
But the constant bad behaviour on Chinese football pitches reflects poorly on Hu Jintao’s government.
So too does the corruption seemingly endemic in Chinese football, where allegations of paid-off referees and match-rigging scandals continue to bubble under the surface of China’s domestic game.
It’s the constant on-field violence that worries me, however, with the safety of travelling teams in question every time they take to the pitch in the world’s most populous nation.
Hardly an advertisement for the world game or China’s imaginary “Socialist Paradise,” and not the sort of place that FIFA should be considering hosting a World Cup.
Yet recent history suggests that FIFA favours political expendiency over fan comfort and commercial interests.
They should think long and hard about hosting major events in China though, where violence on and off the pitch continues to overshadow the exploits of Chinese players.