China’s men’s soccer team fell to a 7-0 loss to arch-rivals Japan on Thursday night, a startling new low for a soccer-obsessed nation where the game has been plagued by corruption scandals and ever-worsening performances.
Players in top European leagues led the way for Japan, with Liverpool’s Wataru Endo and Brighton’s Kaoru Mitoma both scoring in the demolition at the Saitama Stadium, north of Tokyo, in 2026 World Cup final-round Asian qualifiers. Monaco’s Takumi Minamino also scored twice. “This is humiliating,” one China fan wrote on social media platform Weibo, where the defeat has become a trending topic, garnering more than 460 million views by Friday morning.
But in recent years the Chinese Super League has lost its luster – in part because of a wider economic slowdown and the government’s extremely strict response to Covid – while the national team has struggled. Earlier this year the team crashed out in the group stage of the Asian Cup in Qatar, without scoring a goal in three matches. Compounding those factors is a major corruption scandal.
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