An Ignoble Experiment: Who needs the World Cup?

China doesn’t need the World Cup. It has the ‘Village Super League’

By Simone McCarthy and Fred He

Steve Wang/CNN

Soccer players in red jerseys jump up and down, spraying their cheering teammates with champagne, as confetti and streamers cascade around them and crowds capture the jubilation on their phones.

This isn’t Spain’s victory in the soccer World Cup, clinched Sunday in New Jersey, but a win celebrated a day earlier, some 6,000 miles away in Fuping county, a mountainous and rural part of northern China’s Hebei province, at a stadium lined with Communist Party slogans.

This game is one of many taking place across the country, as teams battle for a place in the national “Village Super League” finals.

The amateur tournament has become a phenomenon in China, attracting millions of spectators across the country – and making for a colorful alternative to a World Cup that hasn’t seen a Chinese men’s team compete for more than two decades.

“Standing in the spotlight like this – it’s not something I normally get the chance to experience,” Tong Zehao, a dentist turned defender for Baoding Lianchi, told CNN ahead of his team’s clash with hometown contender Fuping Luotuowan village. “Before the Village Super League, there really wasn’t a (local) tournament with this level of attention.”

From a single league in a rural county in one of China’s poorest provinces, the format has expanded to include some 60 leagues and hundreds of teams in rural towns and smaller cities across the country.

The idea is simple: everyday guys working normal day jobs form teams and compete in local leagues for a chance to play in a national championship – drawing fans to carnival-like events throughout the season.

Local government officials have played a key role in orchestrating the competition’s spread, eyeing the boost for businesses.

But the league has also emerged as an antidote for fans irked by years of entrenched corruption and mismanagement in professional soccer – widely seen as having stymied the country of 1.4 billion from producing a men’s team for the World Cup.

Xinhua/Shutterstock

Summer refuge

People across China have been grappling with a summer of extreme weather – including deadly floods, tornadoes, and storms.

But some parts of the country may also be emerging as hubs for international tourists, like those from Southeast Asia, trying to escape extreme heat in their own countries.

Mountainous Yunnan province in southwestern China, where popular cities like Dali and Lijiang can have summer nights as cool as 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), is one region that has become more popular for what some travel experts are calling “coolcations.”

Latest on China

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Trump’s assertions were serious, if neither new nor entirely backed with evidence. Yet they were not accompanied by any suggestion that the US planned to punish the Chinese government for its alleged actions. That’s a signal that the US president has little interest in upending what has become a fragile balance with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, writes CNN’s Kevin Liptak.

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