2002: a football odyssey
IT IS 9 PM in rural southwest China and on the third floor of a squat, square, mainland-grey building an Englishman is standing on a small raised platform in front of a crowd. At his feet there is a football. If everything goes to plan - and it's a very big 'if' - in slightly more than four years this same Englishman may have the world at his feet. Or he may have nothing. For now, though, he has to be content with what is before him: a drafty classroom in Yunnan province, a football and 70 middle-aged mainlanders dressed in tracksuits. And a lot of self-belief.
The Englishman is Londoner Bob Houghton, who in February took on the unenviable job of team coach to China's national football team. The men in tracksuits coach the youth teams run by all 26 of China's professional sides. In one way or another, everyone in the room is part of a People's Republic 10-year grand plan that was started in 1992, will take in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and will culminate with the 2002 World Cup. It is global in vision, with youth teams sent to train in the great footballing nations Brazil and Germany. Its intention is to place China firmly on the international football map. And Houghton's job is to put them there.
Last night, the tracksuited throng listened as the newly arrived English guru talked about defensive tactics. Tonight, he is speaking about attacking. Houghton is not one of the really big names in football coaching (and thus doesn't come with a really big pay packet) but he has a proven track record. As a young man, he took Swedish side Malmo to a European Cup final in 1979. Since then he has worked with considerable success in Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the United States. Before he came to China, he was coaching English club Nottingham Forest. He has written three books on football, Football, How To Play Soccer and Management And Leadership - A Personal Approach. In 1995, FIFA, the world governing body of football appointed Houghton as one of its elite coaches.
He is clearly a good teacher. In his soft Cockney tones, he talks eloquently, intelligently and with authority on a subject he obviously knows inside out. It is all kept at a level that is easily understood. To reinforce his points, he picks coaches from the audience and asks them to pretend they are Chinese soccer stars. 'Okay, you, you're Hao Haidong. You get over there,' he says to one grinning coach. 'You. You're Fan Zhiyi. You stand there,' he says to another. It's a simple device and it is effective. The coaches like the jokey role-play and Houghton's theoretical points are made more strongly by placing them in a real-life context.
The point he keeps coming back to is the importance of maintaining the 'shape' of a team. However well that team may or may not be doing, he says, they have got to remain a team. 'I have heard it suggested that in the past China may have been ...' he pauses to consider his words '... may have been too optimistic.' He is choosing his words carefully because he is referring to a matter that has wounded national pride: China's failure to make it to the World Cup.
Qualification to what is arguably the greatest sporting tournament on earth has become something of a national obsession in China, for its football-crazy public and glory-seeking leaders alike. While China's bid for the World Cup started comparatively recently, it has had little joy so far. And an expectant public is asking how hard it can be to find 11 decent players out of a population of 1.2 billion.