http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/default.stmBBC Sports Olympic homepage has a smug front page article today titled "Why can't China win at Football?"
Mind you China has 22 Golds so far and Great Britain has 2, one more than Mongolia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
The article, written by the BBC's Matt Slater goes on to discuss quite smugly why a country with 1.3 billion people sucks so bad at soccer. To add insult to injury Slater discusses one gracious Brit in particular, a quote - footie-mad Londoner who has lived in Beijing for almost 20 years and apparently has taken it upon himself, out of the grace of his heart to attempt to educate the locals and help them get better at soccer. Sounds like the perfect premise for a really bad Hollywood film. White man goes and teaches dumb natives [fill in the blank] and lifts their spirits and saves the country from it's horrid lack of [fill in the blank]. There could be a subplot about him falling in love with a cute local girl, a school teacher perhaps. The movie writes itself. Hugh Grant can play the lead.
On the plus side the article does mention that until recently "it was actually illegal to have a kick-about as unauthorised gatherings of more than 10 people were banned."
That might go a long way to explaining why China is bad at soccer.
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3 comments:
I refuse to engage anyone seriously on this topic until they watch "Shaolin Soccer."
Shaolin Soccer is hilarious. Add to We Has Spoken Film Festival.
My brother brought Shaolin Soccer back from China way before it hit the US. I remember seeing the DVD in his collection and being like "Dude, is this a joke or what?" He swore it was not a joke, it was a real movie. I popped it in and couldn't believe my eyes. It's an amazing movie. Consider it added to the film fest.
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