ANALYSIS-Soccer-China gets serious about sorting out soccer

* Chinese soccer dogged by corruption, flagging interest

* National team ranked 102 in world

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Galvanised by word from the very top, China is finally getting serious about sorting out the shambolic state of its domestic soccer scene.

Chinese soccer has long been regarded a national disgrace, a mire of match-fixing, corruption, violence, poor play and dwindling crowds. One joke currently doing the rounds has Premier Wen Jiabao going to North Korea and encouraging his fellow Communist leader Kim Jong-il to follow China’s example in reforming its economy.

“We are now rich and strong,” says Wen, to which Kim replies: “But we have qualified for the World Cup.”

There is certainly embarrassment that China will be absent from next year’s World Cup finals, while North and South Korea and Japan have already booked their tickets to South Africa.

The national team, which has qualified for the finals just once (2002), languish at 102 in the FIFA rankings, just below the Cape Verde Islands.

The huge success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics also reinforced awareness in the Chinese government of how effective sport can be in displaying a country’s soft power.

President Hu Jintao made his concern known last month when he said Chinese soccer needed to rediscover the spirit of Rong Zhixing, the skilful and sporting midfielder from the 1970s.

Hu’s comment came after a flood of similar observations from other officials.

“We have to diagnose the crux of the obstruction to the development of Chinese football,” state counsellor Liu Yandong said.

The mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily, also pitched in with several commentary pieces last week.

“The dark forces in football circles are so vicious that they have to be eliminated otherwise Chinese football can never develop,” read one.

The dark forces are the gamblers and match-fixers.

Gambling is illegal in China but estimates of the value of underground betting range up to $150 billion a year and suspicions of match-fixing have plagued Chinese football since the “Black Whistles” scandal of 2003.

In that case, top Chinese referee Gong Jianping was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of receiving bribes to influence the results of matches.

“CLEAN HOUSE”

Since Hu’s comment, a string of reports have appeared in the Chinese media about a wide-ranging police investigation into match-fixing.

“The political atmosphere towards football has changed and that will definitely benefit the game in the long run,” said John Yan, vice-president of China’s most popular sports newspaper, Titan.

“I am quite certain that the investigations are related to that. They have to do something to ‘clean house’ in this atmosphere.”

The Chinese Football Association (CFA) last week put a statement on its website (www.fa.org.cn) supporting what it described as a “crackdown”.

“Gambling and match-fixing are serious crimes and also a cancer and obstacle to the healthy development of Chinese football,” it read.

“They are a serious breach of sports ethics, extremely harmful. They have to be eradicated. This … is an important step towards the comprehensive treatment to revive the Chinese football.”

There is no guarantee that the “crackdown” will work, of course, as an Anti-Football Gambling Leadership Group was launched as long ago as 2006.

It will not solve the problem of the current poor quality of play at the top of the game in China either, nor the lack of Chinese youngsters choosing to play the “beautiful game”.

“The key factor is the level of participation in the game,” Yan added. “If you don’t get more kids to play, then you have lost the future of the game.” (Additional reporting by Liu Zhen; Editing by Ossian Shine and Peter Rutherford)

To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

(nick.mulvenney@thomsonreuters.com; +8610 6627 1282; Reuters messaging: nick.mulvenney.reuters.com@reuters.net. For the new Reuters sports blog Left Field: http://blogs.reuters.com/sport/))

Please double click on the newslink below:

[LEN-SOCC] for more soccer news