Can’t comment for India, but for China:
Football is very popular in China. At least up until 10 years ago, it was plagued with so much blatant corruption, nepotism and alike that there would be no way to see good players emerging in major leagues and even less to see them making a difference in the field.
I remember seeing a game during which a very sketchy referee’s decision was welcome by a “It looks like team [xxx] will win tonight, as they play at home, and at home, everyone, really EVERYONE supports them!”.
Maybe nothing has changed and so the national team is made of… connected people more than skilled players.Sounds like professional wraslin’
It’s too funny watching Lemmy try to answer sports questions. I’ll admit I was disappointed because I was hoping to see a compelling response to your question.
Some decent points made but I don’t think anyone nailed it yet.
General lack of interest?
China is only interested in advanced math competitions, and India only cares about cricket.
Xi Jinping is a huge football fan. China implemented a plan to qualify over 10 years ago but their federation has been rife with corruption. The previous coach Li Tie (who played in Premier league) is in prison for 20 years for bribery.
https://apnews.com/article/china-soccer-bribes-a3fee6547c9fe9f3734d65d23108cf46
Wait, how does corruption lead to bad results exactly? The entire industry is rotten to the core.
Good results come from good national teams. Good national teams come from national players playing for the best teams in the world, against other best teams in the world.
Good national players come from good youth academies. Specifically, strictly meritocratic academies where hundreds of thousands of young players start around age 8, and get regular game time against other high quality opposition. At every opportunity, if someone is way better than their opponents, they must be moved up to the next level, to avoid developing bad habits that only work against unskilled players.
This keeps being true all the way up the pyramid, with elite prospects needing game time in the highest leagues in the world (despite being unproven/ not good enough to compete there yet!) else they won’t learn to perform at that level. That’s a huge sticking point too, it’s a massive investment for a giant club to buy and then play a youth player instead of an established veteran.
A big problem for non footballing nations to build the game is A) investment in youth setups and B) getting enough high quality game time to train the products of the academies to the point players regularly make the move to the top 5 leagues.
In both cases it comes down to investment yes, but also using that productively (hiring players to develop a competitive local league for your domestic talent to learn their craft in, and building a pathway for domestic talent to make it there). That’s a big barrier in corruption prone nations, because investment tends to fall into people’s pockets instead of going to these goals
They don’t just buy the best players?
Countries can’t really buy the best players: for the most part a national team can only consist of citizens of that country. Switching nationality is possible but heavily restricted and very rare, and can only happen once in a career, before they’ve played more than a couple matches
When decisions are based on who pays the organization the most, it can sometimes improve outcomes for the organization.
When decisions are based on who pays the individual decisionmaker the most, it can often lead to the decisionmaker making decisions that help themselves personally but harm the organization as a whole. That’s bad for outcomes.
That’s why corruption at the individual level often leads to incompetence and inefficiency. Corrupt organizations and industries, though, can coordinate in a way that mitigates these weaknesses.
It’s a british sport that all their colonial countries beat them at! What’s not to love?
Chinese Olympic program is as brutal as the American one if not more. They absolutely care about prizes.
Lucky bastards. I wish my country didn’t qualify so I would be spared all those stupid World Cup news and neighbor’s viewing parties.
Guys, you need to get out a bit. Being so upset about others enjoying their time is mad.
Other enjoying their time with sports usually involves destroying the city and making the streets completely insecure for several nights. Like what happened in Paris when the PSG won.
Usually? Come on, get real.
Hooliganism is still really common, yes.
Yeah, that’s why any city that has a professional sport playing somewhere immediately declares martial law and implements a citywide curfew until it’s clear the celebrations are over.
Most teams are discouraged from winning anything significant. Cities literally bribe the officials to keep their teams out of any championships.
On the internet: I mod a nolympics comm and constantly hate on the world cup.
IRL: I watch/pirate every game of the world cup. I won’t watch the olympics though. It’s nothing but boredom, commercials, nationalism… But yeah, I let others have their fun like I have mine.
For many, it’s the equivalent of dealing with smokers in the 70s and 80s, you cannot escape football and the world cup. In a neighborhood I used to live (Brazil), half my neighbors would play up really fucking loud music, the kind that shakes your windows, as commemoration after a world cup victory
tbf mass tribalism effects everyone not just the participants.
No, they should get out. I don’t need to hear shouting in my apartment.
Everytime I wish my country doesn’t qualify. It’s the worst.
And if they win they ruin the city.
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Nothing new in human behavior. The Nika Riots is one of the deadliest to have happened in Constantinople because of a chariot race.
China qualified in 2002.
Does anyone give a shit about football in those countries though?
Soccer is huge in China
Yeah but what about football?
Technically it would be 足球
you mean rugby but played wearing the silly panties, safety boy gear and helmet?
Nobody in the world cares about thatYeah! All that gear is for sissies! I like my professional athletes with brain damage.
It’s just a small Concussion how bad can it be?
There are a lot more brain injuries in American football than in rugby.
I’ve got good news for you.
Domestic soccer?
The Chinese Super League had 6.1million tickets sold last season. It is a pretty decent size league.
Yeh I don’t think they care much, or try really…
It’s something people cannot comprehend even on a personal level. I don’t care about the world cup for now. People will want to talk about the last game and cannot fathom why I am not watching a 110min game where nothing happens.
Chinese, Indians: They may not give a shit or watch some leagues from Europe if they are into football.
It’s obviously fine if you’re not interested, but it seems unnecessarily aggressive to say “a 110min game where nothing happens”. It also shows how little you know about the sport. Even if they go to overtime (which can only happen in direct elimination matches), that would be 90+30 = 120.
I agree with you, but just wanted to point out maybe they were calculating with the halftime break, so 45+15+45=105 and added some average extra time to get to their number
If that is the case, it doesn’t make much sense. You also don’t really “watch” anything in the halftime break.
Yeah! Plenty happens! Like a bunch of grown ass men dramatically throwing themselves on the ground pretending to be hurt!
When your mom told you videogames were dumb, this is what she sounded like.
That hurt so badly! I literally just threw myself on the floor and started crying. Do you believe me? I say it’s just as convincing as the grown ass men throwing themselves in the ground.
Or maybe something interesting happens in the last 10mims
It’s obviously fine if you’re not interested, but it seems unnecessarily aggressive to say “a 110min game where nothing happens”. It also shows how little you know about the sport. Even if they go to overtime (which can only happen in direct elimination matches), that would be 90+30 = 120.
India runs the ICC like FIFA runs the world cup.
They make bank off of corrupt practices and matchmaking fixes that ultimately harms the sport and de-incentivizes other countries to participate.
That doesn’t mean they lack talent, they just don’t care because they don’t want to spend the effort of building a team if it can’t make immediate money.
Pakistan also infamously never developed its football team due to high popularity of field hockey and cricket, and now they don’t bother because they can’t make easy money out of it.
Despite the low popularity, it is possible for them to form a quality team but no one wants to take the risk.
The Pakistan Football Federation has had issues with infighting, political interference, and corruption for decades. FIFA has repeatedly banned Pakistan from international football due to third-party/government interference in the federation.
Do you have any examples of cricket matchmaking? From what I’m reading, the planning amounts to always putting Pakistan and India in the same group to maximize viewership and timing the schedule to optimize viewership in India since that’s where the most viewers are.
Oh sure, but let’s see Italy beat India in Cricket
I don’t think Italians could handle a week long game lol.
can you imagine how long these games would be if they were in southern europe? They’d be living without internet full time.
I don’t follow football that much but i don’t really mind my country (Italy) not going in the USA, heck, that’s even better lol
who cares about athletics?
i never heard of the ‘soccer age’ because no sport has ever moved our species forward. i’m definitely over here in 2026 celebrating ty cobb; without that dude i wouldn’t have electricity in my house so i can watch MLB games. the only reason anyone knows the name ‘ty cobb’ is because his baseball card was worth so much. that’s our priority beyond athletics. how much does this athlete make per year?
what’s your net worth???
americans love sports so much because we devalue intellect and anything that makes us human. we even frame intellect as pretentious, like all those depictions of impenetrable silent french films and classical compositions that take a mountain of education to understand, even though both are always rooted in universal, human emotions.
Just to clarify for those not in the US or Europe(the question might also be the answer to topic): what’s the World Cup?
Africa:
You realize that pretending to not know what the most watched sporting event in the world is just makes you seem like an idiot, right?
Many sports have a ‘world cup’.
Only one has ‘The’ World Cup
all of them combined are insignificant compared to the attention this gets
sadly
But only the USA has a world cup with local teams
I was about to post an erm ackshually but I checked my facts.
An urban myth holds the name “World Series” came from a putative sponsorship by the New York World newspaper. The earliest such claim found by Snopes was made in 1991
It clearly comes from the fact that to Americans the world is just the US and Canada
USA has its World Series (baseball, and not open to the world). What’s the closed USA world cup?
Out of the different mainstream sports, soccer/football is one that’s pretty popular in the global south. There are lots of teams coming from Africa and South America, and it’s pretty popular in South Asia too
FIFA corruption aside anyway
People do actually care about the World Cup in India, one of my friends’s parents are from India and they specifically mention that’s one of the things they remembered watching on TV in India growing up. It’s not a big political thing like India vs Pakistan cricket because Pakistan generally also doesn’t qualify for the World Cup lmao and people just vaguely root for Argentina Mexico or any other team that does well
I still don’t know what world cup you talk about but I believe you that one family in former England colony did care for their master’s events. Does it have a cultural meaning now for most of the Indians? I doubt that, which can explain the topic here. I mean caring is the first step to make good athletes and China does pretty well in the Olympics. India not so much but I think they’re going to get better in the future.
Football/Soccer is the second most popular sport in India. It wasn’t that hard to find out. Quit being a prick.
People can both like soccer and dislike the british? What are Indians banned from being doctor who or rail fans now? Cricket is like the most popular international sport in India and English is the closest thing to a truly univeral language in India (most people in south India don’t know Hindi). Turns out when the UK invades your country you get to keep the things they leave behind that you like lol
I would argue that the british are responsible for the modern idea of an Indian state in the first place by invading the entire thing and giving everyone there a common enemy by treating everyone living there so atrociously. India would probably be like 3 or 4 smaller countries if the british hadn’t forced them to unify for better or for worse
yeah, nobody in China knows about the world cup, and that’s my WeChat feed is full of posts related to the world cup…
A corruption event held every 4 years where the team that bribes the corruption organization the most get the most favorable placement in the first pairing, and all other strong teams are paired together until they knock each other out.
You also need to pay fealty to the footy corruption organization like charging abhorrent prices for public transit to go see the games, charging insane prices for anything football related, and even crack down on businesses that sell footbal-related specials or sales without also greasing the palms of the footy corruption organization.
Edit:
It seems I kicked the FIFA hornets nest. It’s funny seeing the amount of FIFA defenders rallying against me joking that they rig games for bribes…
So you’re one of the enlightened geniuses that believe that Argentina’s World Cup was not legitimate, huh? You do realize that all of the teams have to be on board for that to happen, right? Even if they were, it would still be incredibly hard to coordinate (if not impossible). They won, and deserved it. Deal with it.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about
They are corrupt, but that has nothing to do with organizing the world cup so one specific team will win it.
It’s a conspiracy theory I’ve heard a couple times that they pair up all the strong teams and the winners typically get a favorable start. I literally couldn’t care less about the world Cup except to meme on it and FIFA though so what do I know. Maybe the corruption company that acts like the soccer Mafia is slightly less corrupt somehow.
I didn’t get the theory. The world cup groups are defined in a televised draw. Are you saying that the draw is fixed?
Yeah the organization that gave trump a FIFA peace prize to bribe him after he was snubbed by the Nobel Prize debacle would play fair… I don’t care whether they really do it or not (they probably do though) I just think memeing on them is funny
abhorrent prices for public transit to go see the games
We’re talking about qualifying for the games, not hosting them.
We’re talking about qualifying for the games, not hosting them.
I guess they didn’t pay enough in bribes to the children’s game mafia then
Also we’re in the fucking memes community. FIFA is a gigantic meme. FIFA and corruption are like chocolate and peanut butter…
You don’t “pay bribes” to qualify, you win matches against other countries in your region. Plenty of corruption to find at FIFA but this accusation just doesn’t make sense.
dude it’s a meme joking about how corrupt FIFA is and a conspiracy theory that they pair up strong teams to eliminate them for whoever paid the most, chill out.
⚽ Tell me where I hurt you by pointing to it on this soccer ball
Edit: do you also think professional wrestling is real? Because the leap in logic from “yeah the obviously corrupt organization that has a documented history of abuse and bribery wouldn’t accept large bribes to fix the games they run in secret” is on the same level as believing the punisher really threw mankind off hell in a cell 16 feet through an announcers table.
Lmfao!
You: I’m not mad, you’re mad!
You’re talking about a children’s game, mind you.
The majority of adult hobbies are also done by children. If you are too insecure to enjoy something because someone younger does it, that’s your problem. Some of most fun you can have is sharing a bit of wonder with the next generation.
Said nothing about adults not being able to enjoy children’s’ games. Taking it as seriously and getting as upset as these three replies is fucking hilarious to me. Get some perspective and enjoy the game lmao
Agreed. See below (a pictorial guide to this thread)
No we are talking about a game. Adults still play soccer even not professionally all over the place. I feel sorry for you people who don’t think adults can have fun. Must be a dull dreary life.
Those sure are a lot of implications about my one sentence reply. Please get more upset.
There are children playing in the World Cup?
I didn’t realize the game they play at the World Cup is fundamentally different than the game of futbol. Thank you for enlightening me. It’s WAY different than the children’s game, my bad. /s
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Yes, you need to be an absolute economic powerhouse like… checks notes… Uzbekistan to qualify in the AFC.
China has far more money than Italy. Especially in sports. They’re just traditionally bad at team sports. As a nation, that is. There are of course Chinese star athletes playing in a team on the international stage but not enough to actually compete in most things as a national team.
Another factor is probably cultural. These countries simply don’t have rhe obsession with football during childhood that other nations have. I might be misinformed, but I’ve not gotten the impression that every Chinese child, no matter how poor, spends all their time outside playing football. But that is the impression I have of, say, Brazil.
Apparently China has a booming football culture (according to Wikipedia at least), but it seems to be a mostly in-house venture for now. Basketball is popular too. Maybe we’ll see more international competition in the future?
There are a lot of reasons, but culture is definitely high among them. China has spent a lot of time and money over the years trying to improve their football presence but it hasn’t been working at all.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-pivots-football-focus-from-mens-to-womens-game/a-63763569
https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-wants-to-become-a-football-heavyweight/a-63652825
Chinese kids grow up learning how to cooperate instead of how to compete.
Then wouldn’t they do better in team sports than individual sports?
They’re both competitions.
