Because you can only pick 11 men at a time. There just isn’t the passion for team sports in China from what I have seen and you need that passion to create the conditions where talented players can get to the top. It is no use having someone who makes Ronaldo look like a saturday morning part-timer if he spends his entire life assembling iPhones and contemplating suicide. Can’t say for India as I haven’t spent much time there but Cricket and Kabaddi seem to take the place of football there.
THere was an excellent documentary on BBC recently about one of their academies, not sure if it’s been still on iplayer but a fascinating insight in to how they’re applying their efforts to develop their national squad.
The Chinese U20 was accepted last year into the German 4th division (Southwest) for a season. The highest placed of the relegated German teams was understandably very pissed off. The experiment was stopped after one game (which China lost 3:0) for various reasons.
