Why can the national football team never enter the World Cup? What is the gap?

In the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the Chinese men's football team entered the World Cup for the first and only time under the leadership of Milu. In the past 23 years, the national football team has never touched the doorknob of the World Cup again. The Asian quota for the 2026 World Cup will be expanded from 4.5 to 8.5, which is theoretically the best opportunity in the history of the national football team. However, in the top 18 of 2025, the national football team will be ranked fifth in the group, and it is far away from direct promotion and the play-offs.

A population of 1.4 billion cannot select 11 players who can qualify for the World Cup. This joke has been ridiculed for 20 years. Which link does the problem lie in? Is it money, youth training, system, culture or national height? Each link has been analyzed thousands of times but there has never been any real improvement.

The total collapse of the youth training system

The demographic data of Chinese football youth training is shocking. According to statistics from the Chinese Football Association in 2024, there are about 50,000 registered youth players across the country, 800,000 in Japan, and 1.2 million in Spain. The base difference of 15 to 20 times is the core bottleneck.

In the 1990s, there were hundreds of sports schools in China systematically cultivating football talents. After 2000, the sports school system completely collapsed, and football youth training was completely market-oriented. Parents are reluctant to let their children play football because their future is not guaranteed, and their children’s education priority is always higher than sports. This social environment has caused Chinese football to lose its source of vitality.

Formalism of campus football

The Ministry of Education has vigorously promoted campus football since 2015, promising to train 30 million young players. In the past 10 years, the actual effect of campus football has been far lower than expected.

The core problem of campus football is that it only pays attention to popularization and not to elite training. Opening football classes in every school does not mean training professional players. The success of Japanese campus football lies in the establishment of a complete channel from elementary school to university to career. Chinese campus football remains at the stage of playing football and does not form an elite transportation chain.

The bankruptcy of the league system

The Chinese Super League was in the golden dollar era from 2010 to 2018, with a single player's annual salary exceeding 10 million euros. This kind of money burning does not create value, but instead causes local players to lose competitive pressure. After the Jinyuan bubble burst in 2018, Chinese Super League clubs disbanded one after another, and old clubs such as Jiangsu Suning, Guangzhou Evergrande, Tianjin Quanjian, and Shanghai Shenxin all disappeared.

In 2024, the annual budget of Chinese Super League clubs will drop to less than 50 million yuan, which is one-twentieth of the amount in the Jinyuan era. The shrinking of the league has deprived local players of their growth stage. The living environment in China's First and Second Division is even worse. Many clubs are in arrears with wages and have been disbanded, forcing players to change careers.

The scarcity of overseas players

In the history of the national football team, the only player who has truly established himself in the top European leagues is Wu Lei. He played for Espanyol from 2019 to 2021. In 2024, only one Chinese men's football player studying abroad will play in the Swiss League.

In comparison, the Japanese team has about 25 players playing in top European leagues, and the South Korean team has about 15 players. Training in Europe's top leagues is the core source of national team level. Without overseas players, the level of the national team will naturally not improve.

Football decision-making power within the system

The decision-making power of the Chinese Football Association has always been in the hands of officials within the system, and professional talents have been marginalized. Former national players and coaches have no real say in the Football Association. Instead, officials who do not understand football dominate the policy.

This system allows the national football team to change coaches every few years. Each time the coach changes the playing style, the players are always adapting to the new system. The Japan Football Association has been adhering to the technical flow line unchanged for 30 years since 1993, and it finally paid off. The Chinese Football Association's policy changes are the core reason why the national football team cannot take shape.

Players’ psychological quality

The psychological quality of national football players has long been questioned. Key matches are prone to collapse and technical moves become deformed. The 0-3 against Iran in the 2019 Asian Cup and the 1-3 against Vietnam in the 2022 World Cup Qualifiers. These tragedies are typical examples of psychological collapse.

Chinese players have never experienced high-intensity confrontation training since childhood. Japanese players have been playing in the National College Players Championship since middle school, and the pressure of the finals has made them mentally stable as adults. Chinese players had almost no such training before the professional league, and they collapsed as soon as the international competition came.

The failed experiment of naturalized players

From 2019 to 2021, the Chinese Football Association conducted a large-scale naturalization experiment and signed many naturalized players such as Exon, Luo Guofu, Alan, Fernando, and Jiang Guangtai. In the short term, the strength of the national football team has indeed improved, but it still failed to advance to the 2022 World Cup qualifying rounds.

The reason why the naturalization experiment failed was the mentality of the naturalized players. Most naturalized players play in China but are still Brazilians at heart and have no real sense of national belonging. Some naturalized players left China immediately after their contracts ended, leaving no sediment behind. This experiment cost several hundred million yuan but the effect was limited.

The cultural dilemma of Chinese football

Football is not yet a mainstream sport in China. The Chinese sports system gives priority to cultivating Olympic gold medal sports such as table tennis, diving, and weightlifting, while football has not been taken seriously for a long time. The core reason why parents don't let their children play football is that they can't go to key universities.

Japanese football began to build a national football culture in the 1980s, and the football comics Slam Dunk and Young Football Players have influenced several generations. There is no similar football IP in Chinese sports culture. Basketball relies on Kobe and Yao Ming to gain popularity. This cultural gap is difficult to bridge in the short term.

Last chance in 2026

Asia's 8.5 quota for the 2026 World Cup is the theoretical best chance for the national football team. However, the actual performance is that in the top 18 of 2025, the national football team ranked fifth, and has basically missed the opportunity to directly advance. It is theoretically possible to go to the play-offs, but it is extremely difficult.

National football coach Ivankovic, a Croatian, will take office in 2024. He originally hoped to copy Hiddink's model, but the results are currently limited. The gap in players' hard power cannot be made up by coaches. It is difficult to replicate the miracle that Milu led the team in 2002.

Change takes 20 years

Real change in Chinese football will take more than 20 years. The renaissance of Japanese football took 17 years from the establishment of the J-League in 1993 to qualifying for the first World Cup group in 2010, and 29 years to reach the top 16 in Qatar in 2022.

If the real youth training reform of Chinese football starts in 2025, the results will not be seen until 2045 at the earliest. Not many parents are willing to wait in this cycle, and not many leaders are willing to wait. This is the fundamental reason why the national football team will never enter the World Cup. It is not a technical problem, but a patient and institutional problem.