Beijing promises jaded jewel will shine for Asian Cup

Last Thursday more than 1,000 children gathered in the Temple of Heaven to mark the 365th day before Beijing blasts a fanfare across the continent to signal the start of the 2004 Asian Cup.

Sandwiched between the 2002 World Cup and the 2008 Olympics, the tournament will undoubtedly set new highs in a year that marks both the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) and the golden jubilee for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

South Korea's unprecedented place in the semi-finals of the World Cup was a sign of the massive development work that has been going on across the three East Asian giants, China, South Korea and Japan, for the past 10 years. The Koreans and Japanese will enter the Asian Cup recognised, arguably for the first time, as genuinely world-class teams. By that time players like Shinji Ono, Junichi Inamoto, Li Tie, Sun Jihai, Lee Young-pyo and Song Chong-gug might not be Asian stars playing in Europe, but stars in their own right.

Statistically, China is already guaranteed to set new benchmarks for the tournament. With 16 teams taking part, it is the biggest Asian Cup ever. Geographically, it is also on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Over 1,600 kilometres separate the venue cities - Beijing and Jinan in the north, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest. For the first time in Asian Cup history air travel will be essential within the host nation.

But while the tournament is being staged on an unprecedented scale, the jewel in the crown of the Asian game may not have the sparkle that has come to be expected at major international tournaments. The 1996 Asian Cup had the Zayed City Sports Stadium in Abu Dhabi, which although 16 years old at the time was still a venue that rose spectacularly from the desert. The 2000 Asian Cup had the City Sportive, a neoclassical reconstruction of the stadium bombed off the face of Beirut that managed to represent both the rebuilding of a modern post-war Lebanon and its sumptuous history shaped by Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans alike.

With its athletics track still in the faded and battered state in which it has languished in recent years, the Beijing Workers' Stadium hardly compares with its Asian Cup predecessors, let alone with the state-of-the-art amphitheatres that Korea and Japan conjured up, with the help of billions of dollars, to mark Asia's first hosting of the World Cup. Built in 1959 the 66,000-seat stadium is an effective and efficient looking crucible that is showing its age. Yet, with the capital's resources focused on the massive building projects for the Olympics it seems little will change as the clock ticks towards the start of the 13th Asian Cup.

'It has staged national games, Asian Games, the Universiade. It's an international standard stadium,' insisted Zhang Heng, the executive general secretary of Beijing's local organising committee, a director of Beijing's Athletic Contest Administration and a key figure in the city's football administration.