August 2 – The vice-president of the Chinese Football Association says his country is going to need time to develop a credible national team after making mistakes “in the last 10 or 20 years.”
Zhang Jian (pictured) says China’s authorities are fighting to keep pace with the rapid growth of the club game.
China is hoping to stage the World Cup in 2034, if not before, and wants to have a team to be reckoned with by then. At present the huge nation is ranked 77th by FIFA.
“At this moment, the level of Chinese football is caused by the mistakes we made in the last 10 or 20 years,” Zhang told Reuters. “So no one knows how long it will take to fix, maybe it will be 20 years later.
“In England or Germany, when their teams underperform their FAs need 20 years to put a development plan in place and it’s the same for China. We can’t say we will do something and then the team will reach a high level in three or five years.
“We must plan to reach the top level in Asia by 2030, so we still have more than 10 years to do that and we need patience. Without patience we can’t be successful.”
The CFA recently introduced a new law to limit the number of foreigners clubs are allowed to field in an attempt to develop local talent.
“We are facing some challenges,” said Zhang. “The first challenge is because of the fast improvement the clubs are making, they are developing very fast but the situation is that the CFA has only just reformed and has a new policy direction.”
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