Can't comment for India, but for China:
Football is very popular in China. At least up until 10 years ago, it was plagued with so much blatant corruption, nepotism and alike that there would be no way to see good players emerging in major leagues and even less to see them making a difference in the field.
I remember seeing a game during which a very sketchy referee's decision was welcome by a "It looks like team [xxx] will win tonight, as they play at home, and at home, everyone, really EVERYONE supports them!".
Maybe nothing has changed and so the national team is made of… connected people more than skilled players.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Sounds like professional wraslin'
It’s too funny watching Lemmy try to answer sports questions. I’ll admit I was disappointed because I was hoping to see a compelling response to your question.
Some decent points made but I don’t think anyone nailed it yet.
General lack of interest?
China qualified in 2002.
China is only interested in advanced math competitions, and India only cares about cricket.
It's a british sport that all their colonial countries beat them at! What's not to love?
Xi Jinping is a huge football fan. China implemented a plan to qualify over 10 years ago but their federation has been rife with corruption. The previous coach Li Tie (who played in Premier league) is in prison for 20 years for bribery.
https://apnews.com/article/china-soccer-bribes-a3fee6547c9fe9f3734d65d23108cf46
Wait, how does corruption lead to bad results exactly? The entire industry is rotten to the core.
Good results come from good national teams. Good national teams come from national players playing for the best teams in the world, against other best teams in the world.
Good national players come from good youth academies. Specifically, strictly meritocratic academies where hundreds of thousands of young players start around age 8, and get regular game time against other high quality opposition. At every opportunity, if someone is way better than their opponents, they must be moved up to the next level, to avoid developing bad habits that only work against unskilled players.
This keeps being true all the way up the pyramid, with elite prospects needing game time in the highest leagues in the world (despite being unproven/ not good enough to compete there yet!) else they won't learn to perform at that level. That's a huge sticking point too, it's a massive investment for a giant club to buy and then play a youth player instead of an established veteran.
A big problem for non footballing nations to build the game is A) investment in youth setups and B) getting enough high quality game time to train the products of the academies to the point players regularly make the move to the top 5 leagues.
In both cases it comes down to investment yes, but also using that productively (hiring players to develop a competitive local league for your domestic talent to learn their craft in, and building a pathway for domestic talent to make it there). That's a big barrier in corruption prone nations, because investment tends to fall into people's pockets instead of going to these goals
They don't just buy the best players?
Countries can't really buy the best players: for the most part a national team can only consist of citizens of that country. Switching nationality is possible but heavily restricted and very rare, and can only happen once in a career, before they've played more than a couple matches
When decisions are based on who pays the organization the most, it can sometimes improve outcomes for the organization.
When decisions are based on who pays the individual decisionmaker the most, it can often lead to the decisionmaker making decisions that help themselves personally but harm the organization as a whole. That's bad for outcomes.
That's why corruption at the individual level often leads to incompetence and inefficiency. Corrupt organizations and industries, though, can coordinate in a way that mitigates these weaknesses.
Chinese Olympic program is as brutal as the American one if not more. They absolutely care about prizes.
Lucky bastards. I wish my country didn't qualify so I would be spared all those stupid World Cup news and neighbor's viewing parties.
Guys, you need to get out a bit. Being so upset about others enjoying their time is mad.
On the internet: I mod a nolympics comm and constantly hate on the world cup.
IRL: I watch/pirate every game of the world cup. I won't watch the olympics though. It's nothing but boredom, commercials, nationalism... But yeah, I let others have their fun like I have mine.
For many, it's the equivalent of dealing with smokers in the 70s and 80s, you cannot escape football and the world cup. In a neighborhood I used to live (Brazil), half my neighbors would play up really fucking loud music, the kind that shakes your windows, as commemoration after a world cup victory
Other enjoying their time with sports usually involves destroying the city and making the streets completely insecure for several nights. Like what happened in Paris when the PSG won.
Usually? Come on, get real.
Hooliganism is still really common, yes.
Yeah, that's why any city that has a professional sport playing somewhere immediately declares martial law and implements a citywide curfew until it's clear the celebrations are over.
Most teams are discouraged from winning anything significant. Cities literally bribe the officials to keep their teams out of any championships.
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Everytime I wish my country doesn't qualify. It's the worst.
And if they win they ruin the city.
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