The Key to Chinese Football: More Beef, More Milk and Better Right Hooks

There were a couple of lessons that one can take away from last month’s brawl between China’s under-21 team and Queens Park Rangers. The first is that footballers engaging in kung-fu fighting should be a sport unto itself. The second is that clear in addition to drawing inspiration from the winning playbook of Communism, Chinese athletes need to eat more beef and drink more milk if they ever want to compete with Westerners.

At least that is the conclusion of Zhang Xinshi, a biology researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is also a member of the advisory body to China’s parliament.

You can’t just say you aren’t used to eating beef and drinking milk and leave it at that,” Zhang said during a discussion of Chinese agriculture at this week’s meeting of the advisory body CPPCC.

“Our football can’t reach a higher level. We are only good at skilful sports. Running for two 45 minute halves on such a large pitch at speeds like 100m, how can (our) bodies do that?

“We all saw the recent fight in England and they (the players) were beaten to a pulp.

“Sounds tragic? But if you are as strong as a buffalo how can they beat you up? Therefore I don’t think we should advocate the Chinese grain-eating tradition.”

Forget nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. It is great to see the Chinese parliament taking up such a vital issue. One can only expect a nationwide Strong as a Buffalo campaign will be enacted in the coming days. Of course if they really wanted to improve the fighting ability of China’s football players they’d give them a couple of shots of vodka before the match and hire Bruce Lee as a trainer.

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Category: Asia, World Football