The worst moments in China men’s soccer

When the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup kicks off on Sunday with the hosts taking on Ecuador, it will mark yet another mundial without China.

This year’s 22nd edition is also the 20-year anniversary of China’s only appearance at a World Cup, in 2002, when Japan and South Korea co-hosted the event.

That sole World Cup appearance is undoubtedly the high point of Chinese men’s football — even if Bora Milutinović’s team lost all three of its group games, against Turkey, Costa Rica, and eventual winners Brazil, failing to register a single goal in the process.

While high points have been few and far between for Chinese football, the same cannot be said for low points, with the beautiful game providing plenty of ugly moments for the country’s fans.

Since rejoining the global community with FIFA membership in 1979, China has attempted to qualify for every edition of the World Cup, starting from the Spain 1982 tournament, but the sad truth is that it has not come close to success beyond 2002.

Let’s have a look at how bad it’s gotten.

The 5.19 Incident

You know a game is bad when it gets a name, like Brazil’s World Cup disaster in the “Maracanazo” loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup in Rio.

China, meanwhile, has its “5.19 Incident.”

The ‘May 19 Incident’: When Hong Kong football sparked a riot in Beijing

The name refers to May 19, 1985, when China welcomed “little brother” Hong Kong to Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium needing only a draw to secure passage to the next round of qualifiers for Mexico ’86.

China equalized after Hong Kong went up 1-0, but the visitors, who needed a win to progress, went for broke, and Ku Kam-fai netted a famous victory in front of a hostile crowd of 80,000 booing home fans.

Riots ensued, and the South China Morning Post reported that the mayor of Beijing had to ask for calm.

The 1990s

May 1993 saw China travel to Irbid, Jordan to play Yemen in a qualifier for the 1994 World Cup in the U.S. The Yemenis were unable to play games on home soil, with the country lurching between political crises that would eventually result in its 1993-94 domestic league being canceled.

The hosts ran out 1-0 winners, and China would go on to finish second in the group, a point behind Iraq, missing out on the final round of qualifiers.

It was an even more heartbreaking story for China in its failure to qualify for Italia ’90 four years earlier. China took the lead against Qatar with just 14 minutes left in the last game of its final qualifying group in Singapore, but somehow Gāo Fēngwén’s 高丰文 side conceded two goals at the death. A win would have taken China to the 1990 World Cup ahead of the UAE.

Home-field disadvantage

Reaching the final of the AFC Asian Cup on home soil should be a cause for celebration, but China’s defeat to Japan in 2004 at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium is instead a source of shame. Riots broke out around the ground after the 3-1 loss, sealed with a last-minute Keiji Tamada strike.

It was not all bad. China did win the Fair Play award and the Asian Cup final smashed viewing records to become the most watched one-off sports event in the history of Chinese television at the time.

Real wake-up call

The worst team in the MLS, Real Salt Lake, proved too much for China’s best in a June 2007 friendly. The 1-0 win was Real Salt Lake’s first of that season, having lost six and drawn three in the league.

China played three games on its U.S. trip, with defeat to the national team and a comeback win over the Colorado Rapids.

Lowest-ever ranking

China’s lowest point in terms of results came in September 2012 with an 8-0 loss to Brazil, its heaviest defeat ever. A 20-year-old Neymar scored a hat trick in the rout in Recife. The other goals came from Lucas Moura, a Liú Jiànyè 刘建业 own goal, and Ramires, Hulk, and Oscar (who would all go on to play in China). This was followed by the nation’s lowest-ever FIFA ranking of 109 in March 2013.

Things did not get much better in the following months, with China losing 5-1 to Thailand in a friendly that June. To make matters more embarrassing, the visitors to Hefei arrived having lost 5-2 to Lebanon in its previous game and with an interim coach in place. Xinhua called this China’s “most humiliating defeat for years,” and reported that fans called for coach Jose Antonio Camacho to resign.

Russia 2018

The Chinese FA warned fans not to underestimate “diverse” Hong Kong in its Russia 2018 World Cup qualifiers — “Don’t underestimate black-skin, yellow-skin, white-skin Hong Kong,” a promotional poster read.

For good reason, it turns out. Played in Shenzhen in September 2015, “big brother” China could only manage a 0-0 draw. A rematch at Mong Kok Stadium in November finished with the same scoreline. Still, China went forward to the third round of qualifying as one of the better group runners-up.

Things would swiftly get worse.

Chinese fans took to the streets of Xi’an in October 2016 after a defeat to 114th-ranked Syria, calling for Chinese Football Association boss Cài Zhènhuá 蔡振华 to resign. The loss came after China’s government had unveiled its ambitions to become a “world football superpower” by 2050, with internet users pulling no punches on Weibo. “Syria, a war-torn country who can’t even afford to buy their own shoes or shirts, whose manager earns a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan, defeated China whose players earn millions,” one Weibo user wrote.

It was around this time that some fans joked that only Chinese women’s volleyball coach Láng Píng 郎平 could save the men’s football team.

Qatar 2022

Syria would once again be a thorn in China’s side, with Italian boss Marcello Lippi resigning after defeat in November 2019. This was the second time that the World Cup-winning coach had quit that year, after he walked away following the AFC Asian Cup in January before returning after replacement Fabio Cannavaro lasted just two matches. “My pay is very high, and I take all the blame,” Lippi said, according to Chinese media. “I am quitting as China coach.”

Before losing to Syria, Lippi had overseen a 0-0 draw with the Philippines — the first time that China had failed to beat the Southeast Asian side since the Far East Games 100 years earlier.

Former China star Lǐ Tiě 李铁 replaced Lippi, and despite inheriting a squad that included naturalized players, including several Brazilians, his side struggled in the third round of qualifiers.

The lowest point was a 3-1 defeat to Vietnam in February that all but ended Qatar 2022 hopes. The Vietnamese had lost their seven previous group matches and had never beaten China before, so Chinese fans did not hold back. China’s defeat trended on Weibo, where fans described the Lunar New Year loss as “embarrassing” and “humiliating.”

“Such a score, and such a defeat to miss the World Cup is absolutely unacceptable to every Chinese fan,” wrote one user.

Coach Lǐ Xiāopéng 李霄鹏, who had replaced former teammate Li Tie, apologized to fans after the game.

“I want to say sorry to all the Chinese fans and to my players,” he told the press. “Chinese football will definitely revive in the future, but it needs hard work, generation by generation.”

Will he be proven right before the next World Cup in four years’ time? Or will another generation bring more of the same bad soccer?