Thanks For Kunming: Chinese Players May Have More To Fear Than Socceroos

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday March 21, 2008

Sharnie Kim in Kunming

The city adds attitude to its altitude once teams cross the white line, writes Sharnie Kim in Kunming.

Kunming, capital of Yunnan province in China's south-west, opens for business at 10am and promptly shuts again for a 2 1/2-hour lunch break at noon. People on the footpath seem to walk more slowly. Not even the most pedantic drivers bother to check their blind spots before changing lanes.

The city's Tuodong Stadium, without an international football fixture in six years, is the unlikely battleground for next week's World Cup qualifier between China and Australia, two of the highest-ranked teams in the Asian Football Confederation.

It is little wonder that in this laidback City of Eternal Spring, football fans also seem about as blase as they come. "We think this game is just a game, and not a match," says local fan Taoyuan Zhang. "It is just for fun, like a holiday. Anyway, I think Australia will win. Maybe 10-1."

Zhang may seem relaxed - but he has spent his lunchbreak peering through the cracks of the stadium's locked doors, watching workers in straw hats sitting on the pitch, weeding.

Kunming's football fans have had little cause to celebrate in recent years. China's World Cup finals debut in 2002 comprised three successive losses. In 2006, they failed to qualify at all. And the region's professional team in the Chinese Super League, Yunnan Hongta, went bust five years ago after its sponsor, cigarette giant Hongta Group, pulled its funding.

Maggie Rauch, a Beijing sports website editor, believes the often openly derisive facade of the local Chinese football community betrays an ardent desire to win.

"They hate them [the players] because they're sick of being disappointed by them," she says. "If they lose, they will be very angry."

At last weekend's China-Thailand friendly, fed-up Chinese fans turned on their own team. After trailing 3-2 to a lower-ranked Thai team that had arrived in Kunming only 24 hours earlier, China managed to salvage the game in the dying seconds, balancing the ledger 3-3 with an injury-time goal.

But it was not enough to quell resounding chanting in the stands of "Sack him," at China Football Association chief Xie Yalong, and "Team China, refund our tickets".

American exchange student Erik Anderson was shocked by the behaviour of the crowd. "Every time Thailand scored, all the Chinese fans around me were standing up and cheering and clapping," he said. "I have never seen anything like it. They actually looked genuinely happy.

"When the [Chinese] team was leaving the stadium, there were all these Chinese fans chasing the team bus, bashing on the windows."

The Chinese national team has been training twice daily since March 1 at Kunming's Hongta Sports Centre, famously used as an altitude training facility three years ago by Spanish giants Real Madrid.

At a post-training press conference, Chinese skipper and star defender Weifeng Li played down the intensity of the team's preparations. "Training should be light and fun. It should not be taken too seriously."

But the same team swore a New Year's oath to qualify for the World Cup, vowing : "By death to kill along the bloody road of defending the honour of the motherland and realise our youthful dreams."

The China Football Association has promised the team 8 million yuan ($1.2m) should they qualify, as well as 500,000 yuan should they defeat Australia.

The CFA's choice of venue has already caused much controversy due to the 1900-metre altitude. Oriental medicine practitioner and Yunnan Educational and Health Services director Joshua Pollock believes altitude-related ailments are common in Kunming.

In 2006, Japanese Olympic swimming hopeful Takehiro Miyajima died following altitude training in Kunming. A fortnight ago, Athens Olympic women's marathon gold medallist Mizuki Noguchi was forced to abandon altitude training in Kunming after developing a mystery rash.

The CFA's plans extend to mowing the pitch at Tuodong down to three centimetres the day before the qualifier, perhaps in a bid to counter the aerial superiority of the Australian team by playing them on the deck.

No detail has been overlooked. Yunnan Provincial Football Association officials quote the price of 444 yuan to Australians buying tickets in Kunming. In Mandarin, "four" is a homonym for "death" and consequently the most unlucky number in China.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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