Mainland sportswriters and journalists were exhilarated yesterday, claiming they had finally discovered the root cause of the country's substandard soccer performance.
The interrogation of top officials at the Chinese Football Association, the biggest development yet in a months-long police crackdown on soccer-related crimes, has opened a window of opportunity for the nation's most popular but scandal-plagued game, they said.
In an expansion of an inquiry into corruption and match-fixing in the sport, Nan Yong, the de facto chief of the government-backed association, was taken away by Shenyang police for questioning, along with two of his senior aides.
The fact that the Ministry of Public Security went public to confirm wide speculation that top soccer leaders may have been implicated in ongoing cases is unprecedented.
Observers of the sport said it underscored the seriousness of the cases and revealed the true scale of corruption in the game.
'But it is by no means a bad thing for the sport,' said Jin Shan, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.