Football in China is commonly regarded as a joke. The Chinese national team almost never qualifies for any meaningful tournaments and the domestic league is an embarrassment, unfortunately. Just 2 weeks ago 1 team chased a referee around (and off) the pitch as they disagreed with a decision. This happens regularly. The clubs and league is run by an organization somewhere under the government, is under-funded and badly run with little discipline and a low fan base. Although the Chinese are much bigger basketball fans, they do love football, and thus watch plenty of European football, when they can. The greedy Premiership though stupidly sold the rights to their games to a cable channel that has barely a few hundred thousand subscribers, to the benefit of Italian football which is on national TV. The Premiership might be changing things soon, as they realize the millions of fans they are losing.
2 weeks ago the Premiership came to Beijing in the form of the Asia Premiership Cup, which, apparently, takes place every 2 years. I only heard about it as I found out for 8 pounds i could watch 2 games on a wednesday evening, and then the same again on a friday evening. 2 of the 4 games involved Spurs, so it was the cheapest Spurs games I have ever seen... and to top it all off, we won the 'cup', though only a couple thousand people stayed on to watch the 'ceremony'!
The new premiership season starts this weekend, though I'll be traveling with mum and sisters so expect more stories from afar... probably involving melting in the 37 degree heat that we have now. wonderful when not exercising!
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