China’s World Cup dream more distant after Covid leaves football in a mess

In 2011, a year before he became president, Xi Jinping talked of his three wishes for Chinese football: to qualify for a World Cup (the 2002 appearance is still the only one), to host the tournament and to someday lift the trophy. The first is still looking quite far away which means the third is even further. The second seemed to be a safer bet. It was assumed that at some point in the 2030s, Beijing would bid for, and be given, sport’s biggest event. After recent events, that is looking a little less certain.

There should have been a lot of football taking place in China over the next 12 months but the country’s zero-Covid policy, which has seen the two biggest cities, Shanghai and Beijing, put under strict lockdown, has put paid to all that. July’s East Asian Championships against regional rivals Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong was switched to Japan in April. Soon after, the 2022 Asian Games, the continent’s Olympics which offer football gold for under-23 teams, was postponed. In football terms, the most damaging development took place last month as China officially gave up the 2023 Asian Cup.

Hosting that 24-team continental tournament was supposed to be a major step towards staging the global one, with new stadiums built around the country. Now an annoyed Asian Football Confederation is scrambling around to try to find a replacement. Officials in the Chinese Football Association fear that Fifa will be taking note. It is the latest blow the pandemic has dealt football in the world’s most populous country.

The – admittedly not unexpected – news the Asian Cup was heading elsewhere came 10 years and three days after Marcello Lippi was appointed head coach of Guangzhou Evergrande, the club who had started the massive