Fans and media slam the China national team after capitulation against Wales in Nanning

Wuhan Evening News said the visitors did not spare the home team any face by scoring six goals. “During a practice session prior to the match, one of the Chinese coaches asked the defenders who would mark Gareth Bale in the match,” the newspaper said. “No one answered and the players just laughed.” After 90 minutes of the match, no one was laughing as it didn’t matter who did the job, nobody could stop Bale.

The headline in Soccer Newsread “Bale is like a support teacher going to the backward mountain areas to teach the kids”. The newspaper compared to the loss to two other humiliating defeats inflicted on the team: the 6-0 defeat against Barcelona in April 2004, and an 8-0 humbling from Brazil in September 2012.

“Fourteen years have passed since and the property market of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou has increased by more than 10 times. Yet our soccer standards remains the same without any improvement”.

State publication the People’s Daily carried the summary: “There is a big gap against between the two teams, yet post-match analysis is a waste of time and the performance (of China) is just too bad to accept.”

The paper quoted China coach Marcello Lippi saying, “The result wasn’t expected, but we didn’t imagine such a poor performance from the players.”