Chinese Whispers: what the Messi row reveals about Chinese football
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What a mess. But beyond its seeming triviality, this episode tells us something about the nature of Chinese online nationalism and it might also shed light on how football works within China. After all, why is it that China, which is so good at so many things, has still failed to turn out a competitive national team? That is the multi-billion yuan question that puzzles football fans within and outside of China.
Joining Cindy Yu on the episode this week is Cameron Wilson, an expert on Chinese football and founder of the Wild East Football blog, who has lived in China for almost two decades.
Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Mitchell.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:31.4 | Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to |
| 0:36.3 | journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. |
| 0:42.7 | There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. |
| 0:47.4 | How do the Chinese see these issues? |
| 0:50.7 | The Argentinian football star, Lionel Messi, has been trending on Weibo, and unfortunately, not for good reason. |
| 0:58.4 | It all started when Messi set out a match in Hong Kong earlier this month. |
| 1:02.4 | His reasoning that he was injured wasn't good enough for some fans, |
| 1:06.2 | and keyboard nationalists quickly took offence when Messi played in Japan only a few days later. |
| 1:11.8 | The Ferrari has dominated Chinese social media over the last few weeks and even led to the cancellation |
| 1:16.1 | of some upcoming Chinese matches with the Argentinian national team, as authorities demanded |
| 1:21.8 | an apology. What a mess. But beyond its seeming triviality, this episode tells us something about the nature of Chinese online nationalism, I think, and it might also shed light on how football works in China. |
| 1:34.9 | After all, why is it that this country, which is so good at so many things, has still failed to turn out a competitive national team? |
| 1:41.8 | This is the multi-billion yuan question that obsesses football fans within and |
| 1:46.7 | outside of China. Joining me on the episode this week is Cameron Wilson, an expert on Chinese |
| 1:52.2 | football and founder of the Wild East Football blog who has lived in China of almost two decades. |
| 1:58.0 | Cameron, welcome to Chinese whispers. Good to be here, thank you. Should we start with |
| 2:01.9 | the mess surrounding Lionel Messi? It all started earlier this month when Messi was meant to play |
| 2:06.3 | Hong Kong. Tell us what happened. So he was meant to play for Intermiami, which is his |
| 2:11.9 | MLS team based in the States. But unfortunately, he was injured and he didn't play in the game, which led to a lot |
| 2:19.2 | of very angry spectators who had paid for their tickets solely for the reason to watch Messi. |
| 2:25.0 | So this caused a bit of a furori, and the end result is that the Chinese FA and the actually |
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