大象传媒

Beijing

I think my wife might be a secret member of the : like them, she just doesn't get why anybody would want to play a sport they'll never be any good at.

Sunday football makes about as much sense to her as 's career does to me and grass-roots sport does to the Chinese authorities.

It seems in this country, there's elite sport and there's getting sweaty for no sane reason - and not much in between.

Which might explain why China's population of 1.3bn will produce enough divers, gymnasts and weightlifters to win the - but not enough footballers to beat Belgium, at home.

Football remains China's most popular sport in terms of media coverage and its men's national team is often described as the best-supported side in world sport.

Unlike many of the Olympic sports the hosts are currently dominating, football ain't no new thing here: the Chinese were playing 2,500 years ago and the was formed in 1924.

The top European leagues have been fixtures on Chinese television schedules for years and the likes of and have made profitable pre-season tours to the Middle Kingdom.

The Chinese like, watch and talk about football. They just don't play it very much or very well.

The men's team are already out of the Olympic competition. Wednesday night saw them . That followed a and - hardly the stuff of sporting superpowers.

China is also already out of the , having come bottom of their Asian qualifying group (behind Australia, Qatar and Iraq).

Now before anyone castigates me for not pointing out China's famous victories against, erm, and that time they beat...nope, I can't remember, I am also well aware of the failings of Britain's national teams.

In fact, has more than just underachievement (although that is unfair on Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, who punch well above their weights in relation to ) in common with Chinese football.

The last global football census conducted by Fifa, known as its "", found China had 708,754 regular players and England 738,800. England's population, however, is about 26 times smaller than China's.

England, , are ranked 14th by Fifa, Scotland 16th, Northern Ireland come in at 32nd and Wales are the 51st state of world football. China are 97th, wedged between Uganda and Iceland.

China's women footballers are better than their male counterparts. They're ranked and have reached the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament.

But even this is a comedown from their 1990s successes and, as women's football grows around the world, China's star appears to be waning.

So why aren't they stronger at football?

Rowan Simons, a footie-mad Londoner who has lived in Beijing for almost 20 years, thinks he knows so I went to see him.

"China just doesn't get amateur football," he said. "The authorities only care about the best kids. There's a very elite focus so the base of their pyramid is too narrow.

"Football in China will never succeed as long as the government controls it.

"And while staging has prompted the government to make changes in a whole range of areas, nothing has changed in sport. Reforms in grass-roots sport have been held back for seven years.

"There will be no legacy in terms of participation in sport after these Games, but I think, and hope, a huge debate about grass-roots sport will start as soon as the Olympics are over."

We were talking at a football centre he runs on the eastern outskirts of the city, and whilst we chatted a mixture of Chinese and ex-pat kids were enjoying the final day of a week-long coaching scheme.

Simons, who has just written about his efforts to bring the world's game to one fifth of the world's population, calls these sessions "play football, learn English" - the educational element helps tempt Chinese youngsters (or more precisely their parents) to get involved.

The ball drills and language skills idea is just the latest plank in his strategy to convert China to the joys of just playing football.

When he first arrived in Beijing as a language student in 1987 he was amazed to discover there was not a single football club in the country. Not only that, it was actually illegal to have a kick-about as unauthorised gatherings of more than 10 people were banned.

Simons and friends risked it anyway and persuaded locals and other foreign students to get teams together to play friendlies. His first team was called Big Nose FC, the name coming from a slang term for westerners in China.

Those early games were only qualified successes and the country's first organised amateur league - the - didn't start until 1994. Simons was a mercurial left-winger for the Peking Strollers in that inaugural season and the IFFC continues to this day.

But Simons, by now working as a pundit on 's broadcasts of English football, wanted more than just ex-patriot games. He wanted to get the locals involved.

And so was born in 2001.

The football initiative still runs 11-a-side competitions but chose to focus on the five-a-side game. It was a smart move.

The league's website now has 60,000 registered visitors, card-carrying membership of 10,000, 2,000 kids in training and 20 full-time staff. There are also approximately 100 teams playing every week in 10 leagues, three seasons a year.

When CCF started it was 100% foreign, it is now 50% Chinese.

But Simons says all this has been done without an iota of help from China's football authorities. The CFA, in fact, does not even have an amateur section and it was easier, from a bureaucracy point of view says Simons, for him and his two partners to set the league up as a "joint venture" than a sports league.

For Simons the challenge is to persuade the decision-makers (which means the government) to embrace the amateur ethos. It will not be easy. There are more golf courses in Beijing than full-size football pitches.

Some help from outside, wouldn't go amiss. Fifa has shown little desire to prompt the CFA into action and the world's leading clubs currently only see a market for merchandise not an untapped source of talent.

"The big growth sport here now is basketball," admitted Simons. "is killing the . They've been much smarter in how you operate in China.

"But there is so much potential here and that's why I'm still optimistic. There are 160 cities in China with over one million people."

When it's put like that, everything seems possible. And that can be said for so many different aspects of Chinese life. The numbers are staggering.

But as long as China thinks there is a path to international football success that involves a higher work-rate and more foreign coaches, as opposed to more players with better skills, it will continue to underachieve in the world's favourite sport.

Hold on minute, that sounds a bit like . Nice to know we share at least one sporting frustration.