Humiliating defeat leads to more agonizing on China’s national football team
Today is a baneful, humorless day for some of the newspapers that ran front page headlines on another humiliating defeat of 5-1 at home on Saturday for China’s football team against an under-strength team of youngsters from tiny Thailand. There’s hopeless despair, frantic questioning and anger at this latest flub, China’s third loss in a row. Although Chinese fans are quite used to China losing at football, the way the team capitulated against Thailand was (as the Oriental Guardian from Nanjing puts it today) “like a dagger deep into the heart of every Chinese football fan” (像一把尖刀深深地刺痛每一个球迷的心). Right at top of its front page, the Oriental Guardian today speculates on the reasons behind the sorry state of China’s national team, and asks “How many times do you still want to say sorry?” (The national team’s Weibo account said sorry after the 2-1 home loss to Uzbekistan on June 6).
The Nanyang Evening News from Henan today has only one word for the defeat: “Disgrace”. As the featured image illustrates, the newspaper’s front page today also has two other short descriptions for headline news: “Attitude” (态度) for the Snowden affair; and “Going separate ways” (分飞) for the Rupert and Wendi Murdoch divorce.
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