BEIJING (AFP) - After staging both a Summer and now a Winter Olympics, there is one major international sports event left for China to host -- the football World Cup.
Football fan President Xi Jinping has said he wants China to stage and even win the men’s World Cup one day, and the country has been building and renovating stadiums in apparent anticipation.
But analysts say Xi’s dream faces a number of obstacles, starting with the dismal performance of the national team.
The men’s side have only ever qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, when they failed to win a point or even score a goal.
Their already failing 2022 Qatar World Cup hopes ended for good in a humiliating 3-1 defeat against Vietnam this month.
As hosts they would automatically qualify for the World Cup, but the current Chinese side would be in real danger of humiliation.
“Many believe China doesn’t want to host a World Cup until they can be more confident the national team can perform well enough so as not to embarrass the country,” said Cameron Wilson, founder of the Wild East Football website, which specializes in Chinese football.
Chinese football became famous a few years ago for splurging on famous foreign coaches and players, but those days are now long gone.
China has been naturalizing players, many of them Brazilian, but the national team remain stuck in 75th in the FIFA rankings.
Qatar were also a footballing minnow in 2010 when they won the right to stage this year’s World Cup.
But they have improved since, going from 113th in the world to 52nd today.
However, Wilson warned that the changes needed for China to follow in those footsteps and become a football power are “massive and fundamental”.
“Currently, Chinese football is dying because it is controlled by political, not sporting forces,” he told AFP.
China needs to “reduce pressure on ordinary people so they are more willing to let their kids spend time on anything other than endless hours spent doing homework”, he added.
Mads Davidsen, ex-technical director of Chinese Super League side Shanghai Port, believes China has the “facilities and logistics to handle big events” -- the Beijing 2008 Games and just-finished Winter Olympics in the capital were evidence of that.
He expects China to make a bid for either the 2034 or 2038 World Cup.