Domestic League safe despite poor World Cup form
A SENIOR Chinese Football Association (CFA) official has played down reports that the Chinese Professional League will be scrapped due to the national team's disappointing results in the World Cup qualifiers.
There were reports before China's 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia on Thursday that CFA president Wang Junsheng has warned the players if they did not do well in the qualifiers, the CFA would rather discard the three-year-old national league.
However, CFA vice president Zhang Jilong said yesterday he had not heard about Wang's warning. 'As far as I am concerned, the league will resume after the World Cup qualifiers as planned, and we are doing some preparation work,' said Zhang.
Zhang has also refused to comment on China's World Cup '98 campaign, saying: 'We still have one more game against Kuwait on Wednesday. The CFA will review the whole matter after that match and will then make a statement to the public.' China's dreams of reaching next summer's World Cup finals in France for the first time ended on Friday night when Qatar beat Iran 2-0.
China are now bottom of the five-team Asian Group A with eight points - four points behind Iran, who are guaranteed of at least coming second.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have 11 and 10 points respectively. Their game on Wednesday will decide who finishes in the top two, while the result of China's game against Kuwait will not matter.
Chinese national team technical adviser Ted Buxton said it would be a disaster if the CFA decided to scrap the national league.
'I've heard about Wang's warning. I think the CFA should carry on with it because they've come a long way now,' said the former assistant to ex-England team manager Terry Venables.
'I will soon meet the CFA with my recommendations on how to improve the team and Chinese soccer. I think they can certainly qualify for the World Cup finals in 2002.' Buxton said he was disappointed with the team's results, but did not put blame on the players.
'I was very disappointed when we lost our home games against Iran and Qatar. We should have won both games but we lost due to the naivety of the coaching staff and human error on the substitutions,' said Buxton, whose service with the team ends on Wednesday.
On September 13, China were 2-0 up against Iran in their first game, but eventually lost 4-2, and then lost 3-2 to Qatar on October 31.
The Chinese side had given their legion of supporters encouragement with a series of fine results before the second stage qualifiers.
They were unbeaten in April's Dunhill Cup in Malaysia and throughout first-stage qualifiers in June.
Several English sides, including Nottingham Forest, Chelsea and Crystal Palace, were also beaten by China during their trip to England in August.
'I thought we were good enough to qualify, and I still think we are. Technically, the players are really strong and they train very hard. People always say the Chinese players are weak mentally, but that's not the case,' Buxton said.
'The players' weakness comes from the people coaching them. If those people are not confident, then the players lack confidence.
'There's an old English saying that if the managers and coaches blame other aspects of the game, like the weather or the pitch, then that will become the players' excuse if they lose.
'The players need a lot of encouragement, and rest between games. They are very tired mentally. They need to see their families regularly.' 'The qualifiers arrangement also killed our games. The second stage of the qualifiers was supposed to be a round-robin in a neutral country to prevent the players from becoming exhausted by too much travel.' In Hong Kong, South China's veteran defender Ku Kam-fai registered with the Hong Kong Football Association yesterday after passing the mandatory fitness test.
