Why China’s lack of success against Hong Kong on the football field isn’t its most vexing problem in sport

Last week was extraordinary for football fans in China. On Tuesday, the national team drew with Hong Kong, eliminating any realistic chance of moving into the second phase of the qualifying matches for the 2016 World Cup. Then, at the weekend, Guangzhou Evergrande won the Asian Champions League trophy, with a 1-0 victory over United Arab Emirates’ Al Ahli in the final.

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All around the country, fans have found it difficult to reconcile the excitement of Evergrande’s victory, the second in three years, with the embarrassment of the national team at the hands of Hong Kong. Those old enough will recall that this is not the first time a critical match leading to World Cup qualification has ended in discomfort for a proud Chinese national team at the hands of Hong Kong.

It was on May 19, 1985, that the overwhelming favourites, the Chinese national team, were defeated 2-1 by Hong Kong. Having reached the final of the Asian Cup the year before, it was probably the best national team that Chinese football has had, boasting star players such as Gu Guangming, Zhao Dayu, and Jia Xiuquan. Indeed, the team had even defeated the world’s top football team, Argentina, the year before at the Nehru Cup in India, a feat Chinese football probably wouldn’t dare to dream about again in the foreseeable future.

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Fans found it hard to stomach the defeat by the Hong Kong team, which represented a British colony on a tiny island. Riots broke out that evening near the Workers’ Stadium in Beijing, and the People’s Armed Police were called out to quell the trouble.

Since then, the numbers “5-19” have symbolised the Waterloo of Chinese football.

Certainly, it has not helped that cultural and political tensions between the mainland and Hong Kong have been running high of late. Neither has it helped that China has been doing very well in many other sports, harvesting Olympic medals in large numbers, never mind at the Asian Games and East Asian Games. Even disciplines traditionally dominated by Western athletes, such as sprint swimming, have seen breakthroughs by Chinese athletes.

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All this must be put into perspective. First, despite the public fever it continues to inspire, football is just another sport, nothing more.