Yesterday marked the end of the English Premier League season. It was a fascinating day with Manchester City coming from a two goal deficit late in the game for a 3-2 win and beating out Liverpool by one point in the final standings. Liverpool had been tied 1-1 in their must win game when they brought in an injured Mohammed Salah in desperation. Salah scored a goal to help Liverpool win 3-1 to delight their fans until the bad news from Manchester. It was quite a final day.
With the one goal, Salah finished with 23 for the season to win another golden boot as the league's leading scorer for the third time. This time he shares it with Son Heung-Min of Tottenham Spurs. Both beat out the great Cristiano Ronaldo who finished third. In fact, eight of the top ten scorers are either non-white and/ or born outside of England. I guess that is why despite having the top league in the world for many years now, the English national team has not done well in international competition. But the diversity of the Premier League is one of the reason the league is followed by fans in most countries of the world.
Son is the first Asian to win the award and is not surprising that he comes from South Korea. South Korea had done the best among Asian nations in international competition. They finished fourth when they co-hosted with Japan. They beat Italy and Spain on the way to the semi-finals. This begs the question: why South Korea, with a much smaller population, is way more successful than China in soccer?
It can' be the lack of training or competition. China has put in a lot of money to bring coaches from all over the world and to improve facilities. China has been successful in the summer Olympics and has even made in roads in the winter Games this year. But it has only qualified for the World Cup once! They had a later start than Japan and Korea but they had caught up in other sports. Their professional leagued is not as well known as the Japanese J League but has been bringing in foreign imports in recent years to improve the level of play. Yet I would say that Japan and South Korea is more ahead of China now than China is ahead of Vietnam and Thailand. So what is the problem?
Well, for some reason which I can't fully explain, it seems to me the communist countries don't do as well in soccer compared to other sports. Russia and the former USSR were world powers in many sports but they were also rans in European soccer. East Germany had more medals in Olympics than West Germany but West Germany was way better than East Germany in soccer. Cuba is great in baseball and boxing but is very weak in soccer. Does communism stifle creativity and soccer demands creativity? Is this one area that capitalism always trump communism? Well, China can still say it can beat Taiwan and Hong Kong on the pitch although that is no consolation.
I always just thought that China just didn't put an emphasis on using its top athletes in Soccer. Maybe they need to do a better job at figuring out what the kids are good at and steer them towards these sports. I don't know. Just a guess.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought you were going to comment on Biden's trip to Asia and also about the senate primary race in Pennsylvania.
-LBOAYM
I think steering kids into certain sports is actually one of the reason that China and the other communist countries don't do well in soccer. They look for certain size and bone and muscular structure at an early age to determine who may do well in a sport. It is easy for something like gymnastic where you can see the flexibility at early age and then know with bone scans that they will not grow up to be too tall for that sport. Same with basketball and that is why the USSR and China had decent big men but not point guard. The vision and creativity to play point guard cannot be measured. I don't think Jeremy Lin would have made it in China because he wasn't that tall at a young age and his parents are short. So they would not have picked him. Nobody expected him to grow up to 6-3 and have the vision of a point guard. Not difficult to pick Yao Ming at an early age! Soccer is much more difficult to predict than basketball. You can have someone like that Swedish guy who is 6-7 or Maradona who was 5-5 and be world class. When we picked someone here at an early age, we frequently fail. Freddy Adu is a great example who was great at a young age but never became the next Pele.
ReplyDeleteI will probably write something about Biden soon but I am not going to write anything about the primary process. I am just fed up with all the crazy and unqualified people in our politics today!