It might be the most populous country in the world, and one with the most potential, but China seems incapable of putting together a football team that can make the World Cup. Once again it will be watching from the sidelines when South Africa 2010 kicks off next month, with little to suggest it will be challenging for one of Asia's four qualifying places at Brazil in four years' time. While China has excelled in a growing range of Olympic sports, the product of years of single-minded planning, the national football team continues to struggle. Its bid to make this year's World Cup was a disaster, tamely exiting the competition at the third Asian qualifying stage for the second successive time China has always been tipped as the hot contenders on the continental stage. But the fact remains that they have never won an Asian title and have only represented the continent at the World Cup once, in 2002 when they went out in the first round without scoring a goal under charismatic Bora Milutinovic. Rather than laying the foundations for a better future, Chinese football has gone backwards in the past year. Gambling, match-fixing, crooked referees and poor performances by the national team have made the sport the laughing stock of increasingly indifferent fans and a matter of mounting state concern. It culminated in the head of the China Football Association Nan Yong and vice head Yang Yimin being sacked for corruption and taken into police custody. State media said they could be tried this month, with the death penalty the maximum sentence for accepting bribes. "Our football level is low. Fraud, gambling, crooked referees and other odious influences keep cropping up," admitted Sports Minister Liu Peng at the time. Gao Hongbo was appointed coach after China failed to make the World Cup and flopped at the Beijing Olympics in front of their own fans. He is the seventh man at the helm since 2000 and FIFA president Sepp Blatter has advised China to stop hiring and firing if they want to succeed. "Where teams are successful at the youth level you also have good international teams," Blatter said after their Olympic failure. "China should start again with the young players and not artificially hire a national coach and change it every year. "There must be some continuity, there must be a plan, there must be short and long-term planning." Wei Di is now in charge of the CFA and soon after his appointment China won the East Asian championships, a tournament that also featured World Cup-bound Japan, South Korea and North Korea. But they did it against understrength squads and Wei warned there was long way to go for China to reach its potential. "The East Asia Cup is not as important a competition as the World Cup or the World Cup qualifiers ... so that means Gao Hongbo and his team have not been truly tested," he told state-run media. "Although China's championship win should be celebrated, it is not a sign that the Chinese team has reached a turning point. There's still a long way before China's football team reaches a turning point." Their next chance for redemption will be the Asian Cup in January next year, while qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup could begin for China as early as this October. "All the efforts of the national team will be to win a place in the 2014 Brazil World Cup," Gao said. "I hope to be able to bring China's football team back to the stage of the World Cup finals as soon as possible." Team coaches will travel to South Africa for this year's tournament to learn from the world's strongest squads. In the meantime, fans will be glued to their televisions watching the competition unfold. China Central Television is broadcasting all 64 matches live and free-to-air, with the station reaching up to 97 percent of China's population of 1.3 billion.

World Cup fever sweeps Lebanon

It might be the most populous country in the world, and one with the most potential, but China seems incapable of putting together a football team that can make the World Cup.

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