Chinese flop leaves fans frustrated
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Shanghai Daily, November 17, 2011
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Disappointed fans. |
Chinese soccer fans were left frustrated after their national team's slim hopes of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup were snuffed out on Tuesday, despite a 4-0 win over Singapore.
Iraq's victory over Jordan in Group A put qualification out of reach for the Chinese, who had hired Spanish coach Jose Antonio Comacho in August ahead of the third round of Asia zone qualifiers.
"I really want to beat my breast in agony," Zhang Peiliang, 25, said in yesterday.
"We lost out on a ticket for the 2014 World Cup even though we have famous Spanish coach Jose Antonio Camacho. The result cannot be accepted by depressed fans. Who knows when the next time will be for China's soccer team to play in the World Cup."
China has qualified for the World Cup finals only once when it played in the 2002 edition held in South Korea and Japan but lost all its group matches and failed to score a goal.
In January, it exited the 16-team Asian Cup at the first hurdle after finishing third in its group behind Uzbekistan and hosts Qatar.
Chinese soccer has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent years and disaffected fans have turned away from the game amid corruption scandals, match-fixing and violence on and off the pitch.
"What's the point of victory over Singapore with four goals?" Weiwei Jueye wrote on her microblog site Weibo. "It seems like food is available shortly after starving people died minutes ago; water is here right after a burning house collapsed."
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