Referee's bias kicks off storm of criticism

Editor's note: After a match between Shandong Luneng and Henan Jianye in the Chinese Super League on Saturday, the performance of the referee Fu Ming has been in the spotlight because of several decisions he gave in favor of the visiting team. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

Fu gave Henan Jianye a penalty kick for a "faceball", not a handball, as the video assistant referee showed, and helped the visiting team to equalize at 2:2 in the 80th minute of a difficult match. Later Fu ignored an obvious foul by a Henan Jianye player in the penalty box, which was also clearly shown by VAR. And in the last minute of the match, the host team seemed certain to score, but Fu blew his whistle for a foul before the ball crossed the line.

Interestingly, Fu's performance has invited criticism from the fans of both teams. The supporters of Henan Jianye said their team has the ability to get a draw by playing fairly and they do not value Fu's favoritism, which tarnishes sportsmanship and the image of Chinese soccer.

The case should prompt the Chinese Football Association to do more to uphold a good image of Chinese football.

It should investigate the decisions and disclose the results in a timely manner to quell the public's suspicions that there were some underhand dealings behind Fu's performance.

China has the world's largest population of football fans, and one of the world's largest soccer markets. But the number of registered players in China is much smaller than that of Japan, which surpassed China in the rankings in the 1990s.

Chinese soccer's ranking in the world has dropped from around 50th to about 90th over the past 25 years, ironically, when China's professional soccer league was started and developed fast. The problem is that more attention is paid to seeking quick success through hiring expensive world-class coaches and buying foreign players than cultivating Chinese coaches and young players.

To attract more young talents to the sport-who are invaluable assets as they can inject fresh blood to Chinese soccer-the sports administrative departments should ensure fair play on the football pitch in the first place, improve the management level of the whole football market and spur the clubs to focus more on developing young players.