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12th Most Recognised European Football Team in China


Djemba_Villan

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Wow that's racist...

Between that and refusing to call 8pints "bro", I'm starting to worry about you Steven.

Is it racist?

If I'd phonetically typed an Irish or Aussie accent, I doubt people would say it was racist.

I've always wondered why doing a Chinese accent is deemed as racist.

<insert>That's the joke</insert>

 

Oh I realise you weren't being totally serious. But it's still a valid point.

I was more thinking out loud

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I played football out in China and we had a guy in midfield the entire team were in awe of. Me and the 2 American guys called him pirlo. Scored from behind the halfway line once with ease. We should sign him up he was a great laugh and his wages were phenomenally low

With the Villa thing, I used to wear my villa shirt to school and tell everyone who was interested about them. I was surprised people had heard of them but it was hardly anyone that had, and they would talk about players like Young and Milner who had left. So I'm not sure where we've suddenly got all these fans from

Edited by skarroki
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Apparently the Chinese have a word for Abdomlahor

 

BerHbQ3CQAAUOeY.jpg

 

Marketing man 1 - Is that really how you spell Agbonlahor in Mandarin?

Marketing man 2 - I don't know, and lets be honest neither does Gabby?

Marketing man 1 - True. So why do we bother spelling it right on his match day shirt?

 

Boom boom!

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I live in China. First of all it's important to realise that although there are 1.4 billion people, which is a lot of people, the market for football clubs who want to make a quick buck here is nowhere near that figure. There are a couple of reasons for this. Around half the population still live in the countryside where poverty is rife, so those people are probably too busy trying to feed their children to worry about how fat Grant Holt's arse is. Even among the growing urban population football isn't that important. That's not to say there aren't any football fans or there isn't any money to be made here, of course there is, but I wouldn't get carried away by the 1.4 billion figure.

Secondly any Chinese people I've met who actually watch football support the obvious teams (United, Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Barcelona), and their reaction to hearing that I support Aston Villa is generally "Oh yeah, I think I know them," when what they really mean is "Who the f*** are Arston Vanilla?" I have no idea how our Weibo account has attracted so many followers but it certainly isn't indicative of any groundswell of support for Aston Villa in China.

I hate to make broad, sweeping generalisations about 1/5 of the world's population but they're really not that knowledgeable when it comes to foreign sports. The atmosphere at sporting events is weird. I think Beckenbauer or someone like that said the same thing about playing in the States back in the day. They get excited at the wrong times and question the wrong decisions... They just don't really get football. Even basketball is the same, and basketball is bigger here than football is. I saw the Lakers and Warriors play pre-season in Beijing and for 70% of the game the arena was completely silent. You could hear the players talk to each other. The other 30% of the time they were chanting "Kobe! Kobe!", and Kobe wasn't even playing.

 

We can market the club and promote ourselves on Weibo all we want but there's only one thing that's going to make Villa big in China and that's success on the pitch. That's what the Chinese are interested in more than anything else: winners. I've seen plenty of people around here in Chelsea gear. Do you think anyone in China knew who Chelsea were 10 years ago? I've even seen Dortmund tracksuits. They only care about successful teams. There's Miami Heat merchandise everywhere, and in five years it'll be next big team, and five years after that it'll be someone else. Like I said, they don't really know a whole pile about foreign sports, they just know the players and teams who win.

As for signing a Chinese player, that would have an impact. The Houston Rockets are still really big here since the days of Yao Ming, and it doesn't hurt that they have Jeremy Lin at the moment too. But remember: Yao Ming was really good at basketball, as is Lin, and they both play(ed) all the time. People would only take notice if a Chinese player was actually playing in the Premier League (they're not idiots) and I really don't think Villa, or any club, would be willing to shoehorn some mediocre Chinese lad into the starting line-up in the hope of shifting a few shirts in Beijing. There's a reason clubs haven't done it thus far and it's because the talent isn't there. The standard in the Chinese league is dreadful and the national team are terrible. If this country is moving up in the footballing world it's doing so at the speed of a particularly lethargic glacier.

 

Why is the talent not there? There isn't great money in sports in China for a start, and the number of footballers who make it big abroad is tiny. Sport isn't seen as a way out in the same way it is elsewhere in the world. Parents put enormous amounts of pressure on kids to perform well in school. Most of the kids I teach wouldn't have the time to play football even if they had the interest (which in most cases they don't) because they spend all the live-long day doing homework. The China we know today is still in its infancy. Personal gain is a new phenomenon to them. To a man, woman and child they are utterly obsessed with making money. Children who spend all day playing football don't perform as well in school, and so they don't get into college, and so they can't get a good job, and so they can't make lots of money. The parents run the show in China and that's all their parents care about. It's no coincidence that the majority of the top footballers in the history of the game came from poor backgrounds. Football was their way out. The same can be said for many of the top basketballers in the NBA. Basketball was their way out. Football isn't the way out in China, education is. Which I suppose isn't exactly the worst idea in the history of mankind, if you really, really think about it.

So to sum up, we can social network our balls off but it won't make a blind bit of difference. If Villa want to make it big in China they'll have to either unearth the Chinese Messi or start winning trophies.

So to sum up, Villa are not going to make it big in China for a long, long time.

Edited by Ooh-Ah
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