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
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.
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.
Ruint! But I’m with you. Football is more fun to play than watch, and there are far better justifications for rioting than a game.
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
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.
Does anyone give a shit about football in those countries though?
Soccer is huge in China
Yeah but what about football?
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.
I’ve got good news for you.
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.
Or maybe something interesting happens in the last 10mims
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
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.
Yeh I don’t think they care much, or try really…
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.
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’.
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
all of them combined are insignificant compared to the attention this gets
sadly
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
yeah, nobody in China knows about the world cup, and that’s my WeChat feed is full of posts related to the world cup…
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.
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
Football/Soccer is the second most popular sport in India. It wasn’t that hard to find out. Quit being a prick.
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.
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.
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.
Holy shit 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.
You’re talking about a children’s game, mind you.
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.
There are children playing in the World Cup?
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.
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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.
