China's UK Tour - Chinese Perspective

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Reuters - China coach Dujkovic happy but China FA criticised after Chelsea trip ' February 15, 2007
By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING (Reuters) - Despite a mass brawl ending one friendly, another match subsequently cancelled and defeat in a third, coach Ratomir Dujkovic thinks Team China's trip to England was a worthwhile experience.

Left-sided players Yuan Weiwei and Yu Hai trained with Chelsea's big names on Wednesday and the Olympic squad, minus the seven players sent home early after the fight at Queens Park Rangers, moved on to Hong Kong on Thursday.

"I'm very satisfied with the training tour in England and France, regardless of some unpleasant things that occurred," Dujkovic told the Titan sports paper.

"While there was one less match, that was the decision of the FA. If there's one thing to regret from the English training, it was that there was one less match.

"I know a lot of our players have seen a lot of Premier League but watching games and playing them are two different things. So, this England experience has been very beneficial to them."

The big losers of the trip look to be Queens Park Rangers assistant manager Richard Hill, interviewed by the police and suspended from his job for his part in the brawl, Chinese defender Zheng Tao, who ended up with a broken jaw, and the China Football Association (CFA).

COMPLAINTS

It must have looked a great idea when the English champions, looking to break into the lucrative Chinese market, invited the under-21 team being moulded for the 2008 Beijing Olympics to train for two weeks in England.

Problems started to emerge before the first match, a fractious 1-0 defeat to a Chelsea reserve team, when complaints about the facilities from some of the squad appeared in the Chinese media.

"I was quite satisfied with all of the training arrangements," said Dujkovic. "The only unfortunate thing was that pitch was wet, but that was from the weather."

Two days later another testy match against QPR exploded in a flurry of kicks and punches with Zheng ending up in hospital, the result, he said, of a stamping.

What had been an insignificant match against a struggling English second division team played on a training pitch in the flightpath of Heathrow airport suddenly became an international incident.

In China, appeals for perspective were drowned out by a round of soul-searching about who to blame -- violent English players, Chinese indiscipline in the face of provocation, or the CFA.

Journalists covering sport are given freer reign to be critical than in other parts of the Chinese media and they make full use of it, pillorying the CFA for failure on the pitch and corruption scandals off it.

"CFA under fire for mishandling QPR affair," read the headline over a typical story in Thursday's China Daily, in which Chinese officials were criticised for unilaterally apologising for the fighting.

Certainly their actions over the last week seemed to lack a firm hand.

The seven players despatched home after the QPR match were always going to be released early at the request of the clubs, the CFA said, while any disciplinary action would rest on the results of an enquiry. "We will make a decision about whether to punish the players involved or not according to the FA's investigation," CFA general secretary Xie Yalong was quoted as saying in the paper. Reuters
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