China, naturalisation and Norman Bethune: could footballers be among a select group of foreigners beloved by Chinese?
- Canadian doctor, who is still revered in China, has been mentioned since ‘first non-Chinese’ player gained citizenship
- World Cup 2002 coach Bora Milutinovic is held in high esteem – will Marcello Lippi join him?
It’s not often that a man with no notable sporting connection who died almost 80 years ago is relevant to the sports pages, but that’s the case this week.
Norman Bethune, was a Canadian, a doctor and a communist. He had been a surgeon on the front line of the Spanish Civil War and then took his services to China, where he served under the Eighth Route Army in the Sino-Japanese War.
It was there where Bethune would die in 1939 in Hebei, aged 49. The doctor was in China for less than two years but his fame has lived on.
“A man who is of value to the people,” wrote Mao Zedong of a man he met only once in the essay that detailed Bethune’s last months.
It’s fair to say that Bethune has been valued by the people ever since.
Mao’s tribute became required reading for schoolchildren in the 1960s and he still features in primary school textbooks.
China has always had a soft spot for foreigners who have a soft spot for China
Bethune remains one of the few non-Chinese to have statues in China built in their honour, while medical schools and military medals bear his name.
He is one of a select few Westerners who are widely revered in the country, along with fellow doctor George Hatem and journalist Edgar Snow. These are foreigners of value.
So it is little wonder that Bethune’s name is one that has been mentioned when people discuss China’s growing naturalisation of foreign footballers.
Putting aside what that might actually look like, Delgado’s certainly is an interesting case.
It has been widely reported that he has no Chinese ancestry, at least not in two generations as Fifa’s rules require regarding eligibility to represent a country.
Nor has he lived in China for five years, thereby fulfilling Fifa’s residency requirements.
All of the players naturalised before Delgado have been eligible through their ancestry, while the others whose potential naturalisation has been discussed have played for Chinese clubs long enough to qualify as residents.
However, after finalising the paperwork, he is a Chinese citizen and has the ID card to prove it. His move, some say, is driven by his love of China.
In five years he will be eligible to play for the national team, although it might be a bit early for such talk. We don’t know much about him as a footballer, after all. The 22-year-old’s career consists of fewer than 60 appearances in the Portuguese second tier.
He played with the second team of Lisbon giants Sporting but that is not the biggest name among his past clubs – that honour goes to Inter Milan. The pedigree is there but that’s no guarantee of a future at club level, let alone as an international.
Some see his naturalisation as potentially opening the floodgates for others to follow. Delgado offers Shandong manager Li Xiaopeng the option to play him as both a domestic player and as the local under-23 that needs to feature in every game.
That could be construed as a clever way to improve your squad within the rules or a move that takes football away from a Chinese-born footballer. It would be both were every club to follow suit.
China has always had a soft spot for foreigners who have a soft spot for China. Delgado might prove to be another of those.
Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic is rightly held in lofty esteem as the only coach to take the country to the World Cup. Marcello Lippi will join him if he can match that feat.
It almost sounds like the plot for a film.
One of the early introducers of football to China – Fifa’s declaration that the Chinese invented the game notwithstanding – is already the subject of a film.
Not that Chariots of Fire makes much mention of Eric Liddell’s time teaching football in Tianjin, the city where he was born to Scottish-Christian missionaries and later made his home.
The Paris Olympics gold medallist returned to China and went on to coach their football team at the 1936 Olympics where they lost 2-0 to Great Britain.
Liddell died in 1945 as a prisoner of the Japanese, aged 43, after living a life that was deserving of a statue or two. Who knows, one day China’s naturalised footballers might warrant a statue of their own?
