FIFA: China more open and willing to improve
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The Chinese Football Association (CFA), through close cooperation with FIFA, is set to become a more transparent organization.
Eight FIFA experts, mainly working in media operations, marketing development and IT system management, concluded a three-day visit to China on Thursday aimed at acquiring a comprehensive view of Chinese soccer in order to offer further help to the country on the international stage.
A panel of seven FIFA experts visited China in February. Later, in March, FIFA signed a cooperation agreement with the CFA in Zurich in an attempt to support the development of Chinese soccer.
According to Urs Zanitti from the MA & Development Division of FIFA, under the principle of 'You do, and we do!' FIFA is willing to help every member association to promote soccer.
After a nationwide crackdown on soccer corruption, which resulted in the stepping down and arrests of several top CFA officials, the reshuffled organization has started to make major changes.
"We are glad to see the CFA is becoming more open and more willing to work with FIFA to improve soccer in China," said Zanitti, who said China needed to have more communication with other associations. "We all love the game, we are here now working with the CFA, we have an agreement, between FIFA and CFA, to help it in the organization of the game."
Christophe Kukawka, chief of FIFA's media communication department, said the development program in China was a difficult but significant one.
"FIFA plans to offer aid to member associations and China is the first and most important one.
"It's very hard to lift up the sport in such a big country like China, but we can do it step by step, and China will become better," said Kukawka, who was surprised by China's estimated fan base of 150 million, which equals that of Europe.
On the Chinese side, CFA head Wei Di, who has been in office for 16 months, said the three-day dialogue with the FIFA experts was quite helpful and the CFA had a lot of work to do to make the game here prosper.
"The main purpose of FIFA's visit was to help the CFA to operate in a more professional way," Wei said. "We had a meeting which allowed every expert to give a presentation of five to eight minutes. I was sweaty at the meeting, partly because the weather was quite hot, but mostly because the experts pointed out many problems inside the CFA and Chinese soccer.
"To sum up, one problem comes from our loose work arrangements and another is the poor operating ability of our association," Wei said.
