If you want to know who's the best non-chinese player better ask a non-biased chinese athlete. ML is a CNT representative, he obeys the PRC official guidelines, so if Lin-Yun Ju had a better ranking, he'd said LYJ, Tony would understand for sure why I'm saying this, and yes it has to do with anything related to China's geopolitics, if it was Chen TianYuan who's now french he would have said Chen TianYuan. To me better ask Fan Zhendong, the less biased chinese athlete non related anymore to the CNT. FZD has certainly way more freedom of speech than ML.
And about football or basketball being more famous than in the PRC, It makes me laugh hard: when you're an NBA player without contract like recently Killian Hayes after his interim at Sacramento, the second option is Europe, and not because of the Euroleague you simply make a better living there playing in national leagues, then Australia cos' there's a really strong league there developing talented 16 to 19 years old teens before the NBA draft, then only China. Guershon Yabusele once said that at one point in his career he was so down mentally he was ok to play in China, that tells ya how much mediocre you have to be or feel to play there. So please, be serious a minute.
Football, well the women's team is decent that's for sure, like basketball, but anything boys/mens team is atrocious, failing to qualify in any world cup since 2002, ousted in pool matches. And it was their 1st ever WC... Olympics... you have to go back to 1936, Asian Cup... never won any, 2 finals in 1984 and 2004. Why do you think japanese and south-korean players get contracts in top UEFA teams, but not any chinese one ? even the japanese rugby top tier league, mostly made for retired australians, south-africans and all-blacks players, makes more annual revenues than the basketball chinese league. It's well-known the football CSL is rigged by corruption at every stage, and it's that way since more than a decade. even the US MLS looks "decent" compared to the CSL, even if it's for retired top international players, the only exception being Leo Messi, but when you look at Inter Miami performances in last year's FIFA Club World Cup, that's not good, Inter Miami could barely win games in the Europa League. Everyone knows that, only the americans from the USA thinks their MLS players are semi-gods... mostly because they know nothing about football, Alexi Lalas is being punished every night by Zlatan and Titi because he's the worst pundit ever football has ever seen, a former Team USA international player, that tells a lot. Pulisic will be a way better pundit when he'll retire, because he knows what football really is, playing in Italy since a while now, Lalas has played 2 years in Padova, then back to the US, too much mediocre player according to the european standards.
China's former football chief and national team coach are among 73 to receive lifetime bans for match-fixing.
www.aljazeera.com
