October 17, Beijing time knocked, hundreds of millions of fans disheartened, China's national football team's historic turning point quietly descended, the scene is unwilling to witness.
Soon after Song Kai, the new president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), took office, the team suffered a thunderous defeat against Uzbekistan. Compared to the score on the field, the feedback from the fans off the field was even more embarrassing. After the game, the goal hero Wei Shihao pleaded with the fans to stop cheering for the team, although they are fighting for their country, but they do not want to support everyone, and they just hope that they will no longer fight for them and cheer for their opponents. May such a scene will not be repeated.
It's sad that a national soccer superstar issued such sentiments after the game. Why did Wei Shihao say so? The reason is that the national soccer team is gradually losing the hearts and minds of more and more people choose not to support. Even when the national soccer team is no longer in the spotlight and even passers-by are too lazy to point fingers, that's the saddest moment. China's national soccer team has come to this point.
From June to October, the national soccer team took part in six warm-up matches, with crowds falling like a cliff, especially after the turning point.In June, the national soccer team played Myanmar and Palestine to large crowds - 27,000 for Myanmar and 16,000 for Palestine - averaging about 22,000 for the two matches, with 20,000 loyal fans in attendance at each game.
At that time, the national team swept Myanmar 6:0, 4:0 and beat Palestine 2:0. Moving to the September match against Malaysia, the world's 136th-ranked Malaysia instead forced a draw against the national team, with the home side not being spared. National soccer fans were doubly humiliated as what was expected to be a landslide victory ended 1:1, the turning point.
The crowd for the national football team plummeted after the match, with 26,000 people witnessing the performance in Malaysia. Do you want the national soccer team to lose? Of course not. Do you want the national soccer team to draw? No. After the disappointment of the fans, they were eager to see the national soccer team beat their opponents. However, for the match against Syria in September, there were only 12,000 spectators on the field, the number of people plummeted from 26,000, and the national football team lost 0:0 to their opponents, the disappointed fans even threw bottles at the retreating national football team to express their anger.
Starting in Malaysia, the crowd dropped dramatically, with only 9,212 fans at the Vietnam game, the first time a live national soccer crowd fell below five figures, with only a few thousand in support. Despite the heat picking up slightly with a 2:0 win afterwards, the turning point was evident with 12,868 fans still on hand compared to the previous game against Uzbekistan.
For the first three games, the national soccer team averaged 23,000 spectators. After the Malaysia match, the total audience for the three matches was about 30,000, an average of only 10,000 per match. This was a turning point, and the disappointment of the fans finally showed. If the national soccer team continues to have few spectators at its next home matches in the World Qualifiers, I am afraid that the matches with South Korea will also be extremely difficult.
