Reflections | Why China’s World Cup failings might be explained by looking at nation’s long relationship with football
According to Fifa, the earliest recorded form of football was played in ancient China, where it remained popular in various forms before disappearing
Like millions of people around the world, my 15-year-old nephew is religiously following the 2018 Fifa World Cup tournament in Russia. An avid football fan, he is a mid-fielder in his school’s team. Regrettably, I haven’t been able to connect with him vis-à-vis the beautiful game because I’ve never been good at sports, nor am I good at watching them. I just don’t get it.
On its website, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) states that the “very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China”. This isn’t to say that the Chinese invented football. After all, kicking a ball for sport has a certain universality about it. The ancient Chinese, being compulsive chroniclers, were probably one of the few ancient peoples who wrote about it.
Fifa does not identify the “military manual”, but Records of the Grand Historian, completed around 94BC, mentions that during the Warring States period (475-221BC), the people of the rich and powerful state of Qi (in present-day Shandong) engaged in all manner of leisure activities, one of which was cuju, literally “kicking a ball”.
By the Han period (206BC-AD220), cuju had developed into a professional sport. Played on special grounds – with stands for spectators – where two teams of 12 players each tried to kick a leather ball stuffed with animal hair into a goal, it was popular among the elite and soldiers, who played the game as a form of exercise.
Its popularity soared during the Tang dynasty (618-907), when a leather ball filled with the inflated bladder of an animal was used for better manoeuvrability. With two competing teams, a lighter ball that could go longer distances, and two goalposts, the game bore a resemblance to modern-day football. There were even women’s teams.