When ex-Manchester United striker Dong Fangzhuo left Legia Warsaw on August 1, a brief yet beautiful piece of football symmetry disappeared with him. The first Chinese player in Poland may have featured in only six games in just over five months – and failed to find the net in any of them – but in doing so he formed one half of an equation so perfect that his failure to make any impression in a league currently ranked 26th in Europe seems rather irrelevant.

Dong, 25, arrived at Legia in late January and traveled to the club’s training camps in Spain and Cyprus. After scoring three times in seven friendly games, he signed an 18-month contract on February 23rd with an option for two further years.

Legia management enthused about a player for whom Sir Alex Ferguson was once prepared to pay Dalian Shide £3.5 million (although only £500,000 actually changed hands), with sporting director Miroslaw Trzeciak describing Dong as ”a quality striker who will play a big part in our chase for the league title”. One visitor to the Legia website was even more inspired, writing that the news was like ”cookies falling from the sky”.

In hindsight, however, there were already signs that Dong’s stay in Poland would prove as frustrating as his time in Manchester. Behind the scenes, coach Jan Urban apparently took some convincing that the player was right for Legia. Similarly, whilst the fans were on the whole cautiously positive about the move, mutterings were still heard that Legia were in more urgent need of a defensive midfielder than another striker.

The fact that Dong then failed to appear in what was supposed to be his debut against Cracovia on February 26th did little to reassure the skeptics. Wearing the number 14 shirt, he finally made his first appearance for Legia on March 13th as a 69th-minute substitute against Polonia Bytom before starting the next match against Śląsk Wrocław. And apart from two further games apiece in the reserves and the Polish Cup, that was that for Dong at Legia.

But it doesn’t matter. Here’s the beautiful part – just as the previously-hyped Chinese footballer was attempting to rebuild his career in Poland, the once-hotly tipped Polish player was doing the same thing in China. As luck would have it, with rather more success, too.

Dong Fangzhuo can only hope that his road to redemption takes fewer twists and turns than that of Emmanuel Olisadebe. One of the very few Polish citizens born in the Nigerian city of Warri, the 18 year-old Olisadebe signed for Polonia Warsaw in 1997, and supplied the firepower which three years later propelled the club to a first league title in 56 years.

The key figure, not just in the triumph of 2000, but in what would be a remarkable integration of the young Nigerian to a fundamentally alien culture, was Polonia coach Jerzy Engel. Having seen something in Olisadebe which both Wisła Kraków and Ruch Chorzów had missed during the striker’s earlier, unsuccessful trials with Polonia’s league rivals, Engel had not only made him the attacking focal point of his team, but also conceived the outline of a larger, considerably more ambitious plan.

Recently named national coach and chastened by Poland’s failure to reach the 2000 European Championship finals, Engel decided to make Olisabede – scorer of twelve goals in Polonia’s title-winning season – the first African-born player to represent Poland. As it turned out, convincing the football-mad President Alexander Kwaśniewski to waive the regulations about residency and language proficiency and fast-track Olisadebe’s Polish citizenship proved easier than persuading the player himself.

Olisadebe has always had a complex relationship with his adopted homeland. Gratitude for the country in which he launched his career and met his future wife (in Pizza Hut on Ulica Marszałkowska, no less), along with a deep bond with Engel (whose son would serve as Olisadebe’s best man at his wedding in Warsaw’s old town in 2001), was mixed with a struggle to truly belong in a country of 98% ethnic Poles, a minority of whom subjected him to racist abuse both on and off the pitch.

In the end, however, Olisadebe decided for Poland – admitting that ”I don’t know what gave me the strength to go through with this” – and once in the national shirt there was little sign of any indecisiveness. He scored on his debut against Romania in Bucharest in August 2000 and never looked back, finding the net seven times in his first nine games. With the fiasco of Euro 2000 a distant memory, Poland became the first European nation to qualify for the World Cup in 2002, ending 26 years in the international wilderness.

Emmanuel Olisabebe was a hot commodity. Voted the 29th-best player in the world by FIFA in 2001, he finalised a move to Greek giants Panathinaikos for $1.7 million – over ten times the amount Polonia had paid to Nigerian club Jasper United in 1997 – and cashed in further on his newly-found superstar status by featuring in an eye-catching series of advertisements for vacuum cleaners.

The next two years would be the peak of his career. Olisabebe played in every game at the World Cup, scoring Poland’s fastest-ever goal in the tournament after three minutes against the United States. With Panathinaikos, meanwhile, he won the domestic double and played in the Champions League.

However, the success came at a price. Olisadebe was increasingly troubled by knee injury, and rumours circulated back in Poland that he was being forced to play on painkilling injections by Panathinaikos management who were unwilling to pay for surgery. Absent from the side all too often, Olisadebe lost his place and drifted down the pecking order before leaving Greece at the start of 2006.

Thus began Olisadebe’s Dong Fangzhuo period. Despite knees as fragile as the club’s grasp of basic accounting principles, he signed for Harry Redknapp’s Portsmouth. Two games and no goals later, he returned to Greece for a short spell with Skoda Xanthi – where, appropriately enough, he never really got started – before pitching up in Cyprus with top-flight new boys APOP Kinyras Peyias.

And then it happened. A move to Henan Construction in Zhengzhou in 2008, superficially an admission that Olisadebe’s career – much like the player himself – was on its last legs, instead turned out to be inspired. Runner-up in the China Super League scoring charts in his first season with 12 goals in 26 games, he was nominated as the league’s second most valuable player and, in a curious echo of a previous life, was awarded citizenship of Zhengzhou.

Emmanuel Olisadebe is still in China, where despite yet another knee injury which saw him miss out on this season’s Asian Champions League, he was once again named as the second-best player in the league. Recent interviews have seen him express a wish to play for two more seasons with Henan before going into coaching. It’s probably fair to suggest that he could pass on a thing or two.

Olisadebe’s Zhengzhou lies just over 500 miles from Dalian, where a young Dong Fangzhuo – now starting all over again at newly-promoted Portuguese side Portimonense – once honed the skills which saw him hailed as the first Chinese football superstar.

Amongst the myriad attractions of the city is one of China’s oldest Confucian temples. Harmony and balance play a key role in the Confucian vision, and the brief overlap of the Pole in China and the Chinese in Poland, each attempting to achieve the same thing, appears as a captivating and hidden piece of symmetry worthy of the surroundings. Sometimes football is really beautiful.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Over 5,000 people have been arrested in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as part of a World Cup initiative set up to crackdown on illegal betting rings during the tournament.

Nearly $10 million (£6.5 million) was seized during the Asia-wide raids conducted by Interpol [an international policing agency based in Lyon, France], with over 800 illegal gambling dens being systematically identified and spoliated during the month-long campaign.

Operation Soga III, which began on the opening day of the World Cup (June 11th) and ran until the day of the final (July 11th), found that the various dens had handled over $155 million (£100 million) worth of bets during the tournament in South Africa.

Interpol’s chief of police services Jean-Michel Louboutin issued a short statement to confirm the positive results of the operation, as well as acknowledging the impact it may have on organised crime in the region;

“The results we have seen are impressive, not only in the number of arrests and seizures made across the region in just one month, but in terms of the police co-operation which made this possible.

As well as having clear connections to organised crime gangs, illegal soccer gambling is also linked with corruption, money laundering and prostitution,”

The information gathered will now be reviewed and analysed to determine the potential involvement of other individuals or gangs across the region and beyond.”

Louboutin also went on to praise the efforts of the respective police forces involved, insisting that the international cooperation shown will provide a good foundation the future;

“The experience and expertise developed in each of these types of operations provides an even stronger base from which police can work.”

Interpol ran similar predecessors to Operation Soga III back in 2007 and 2008, codenamed (naturally) Soga I and Soga II. In total, the three Soga operations have led to nearly 7,000 arrests and the seizure of more than $26 million (£17 million).

See? Regardless of what the hapless, befuddled, money-grabbing shenanigans of FIFA may lead you to believe, the good fight is being fought by someone out there – on behalf of the footballing community at large.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

China’s Men’s Olympic Football squad for Beijing 2008:

Coach:
Yin Tiesheng (51)

Goalkeepers:
Qiu Shengjiong (22) (Shanghai Shenhua)
Liu Zhenli (23) (Qingdao Jonoon)

Defenders:
Li Weifeng (29) (Shanghai Shenhua)
Yuan Weiwei (22) (Shandong Luneng)
Feng Xiaoting (22) (Dalian Shide)
Wan Houliang (22) (Shaanxi Chanba)
Tan Wangsong (22) (Tianjin Teda)
Lü Jianjun (23) (Changchun Yatai)

Midfielders:
Zheng Zhi (27) (Charlton Athletic, England)
Zhao Xuri (22) (Dalian Shide)
Zhou Haibin (23) (Shandong Luneng)
Cui Peng (21) (Shandong Luneng)
Hao Junmin (21) (Tianjin Teda)
Jiang Ning (21) (Qingdao Jonoon)
Chen Tao (23) (Changsha Ginde)

Strikers:
Han Peng (24) (Shandong Luneng)
Gao Lin (22) (Shanghai Shenhua)
Dong Fangzhuo (23) (Manchester United, England)

Hosts China are in group C with New Zealand, Brazil and Belgium. Home advantage and national pride will play a role but this Chinese side doesn’t have the talent necessary to progress far in the tournament, and it will be a surprise if they qualify for the knockouts.

Back to 2008 Olympic Football Squads.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games kick off in a month, with the 2008 Olympic football tournament from 6th to 24th August.

For these games, the men will compete in a 16-team tournament (7th to 24th August) (the women will compete in a 12-team tournament – 6th to 21st August) with four groups of four teams each with the top two in each group progressing to the knockout stages.

Full national teams ceased to compete in the four-yearly competition in 1930 when the first World Cup was played in Uruguay. Since then, youth teams have competed in the men’s tournament and despite with the absence of senior players (men’s teams are allowed to augment their squad with three players over the age of 23) the tournament has proved to be quite entertaining over the years.

Here are the teams:

Group A

Ivory Coast – Have the energy and talent to upset the bigger sides in this group and if they can defend in shape and maintain their tactical discipline then they may well qualify from this group.

Argentina – One of the strongest teams in the world and a veritable production line of footballing talent going from Argentina to Europe. Experienced and supremely talented and led by the indomitable Riquelme, Argentina are many people’s pick to defend their Olympic good won 4 years ago.

Australia – One of the weaker teams in the competition and the squad picked shows a real lack of experience at the Under-23 level. In the toughest group and unlikely to progress.

Serbia – Did quite well at the U-21 Euros and have a talented and disciplined youth team that should qualify for the knockout stages as long as they overcome the Ivory Coast.

Group B

Netherlands – Consecutive U21 Euro champions and perhaps the strongest team from Europe playing here. Tipped to win the Olympics this year but for my money are on an equal footing with Brazil and Argentina.

Nigeria A decent outfit but without the talent that the national team has at senior level. It remains to be seen who they pick for the tournament as their overage players but they’ll need to be at their best to progress from this group.

Japan – On paper look to be the weakest team of the group but have traditionally been strong on teamwork and if they can keep their discipline against the likes of Nigeria and USA, they have an outside chance of reaching the knockout stages.

USA – The Olympics are an excellent chance for the US to prove that their youth development is not as pathetic and downtrodded as critics claim it to be. They have the raw talent and if they can harness it, a spot in the knockout stages awaits.

Group C

China – The hosts are in a tough group – no one expects to beat Brazil and China will have Belgium to contend with as well. They’re on par with New Zealand but could use the occasion and national pride to spring a surprise.

New Zealand – Without Australia to contend with, New Zealand had an easy path to qualification for the Olympics but will have to fight for respect or suffer a drubbing at the hands of Brazil and Belgium.

Brazil – They’ve selected a talented and experienced squad and should top this group easily.

Belgium Have a good youth program and based on skill-level alone are a superior side to China or NZ. Don’t see them getting a medal but they could give Brazil a run for their money in this group.

Group D

Korea Republic – Wildcards in this group – have the potential to qualify and are physically fit enough to deal with Cameroon’s challenge as well. Should be an interesting contest.

Cameroon – Along with Korea they will be aiming to get a win over Italy and cause an upset. It might come down to the overage players they pick because at the U-23 level they’re not that strong.

Honduras – Unlike New Zealand who had Oceania to themselves, Honduras had to finish ahead of Mexico to qualify for the Olympics. However, they lack the firepower to challenge any of their rivals in this group.

Italy – Italy beat Portugal in a play-off to get here, and have an excellent squad based almost entirely in Italy (the exception being Rossi at Villareal). They have the talent to top their group but their lack of experience could count against them in the later stages of the tournament.

Also See:

2008 Olympic Football Tournament Squads
2008 Olympics Football Teams Map (courtesy of Bill Sports Maps, excellent graphical depiction of the teams involved).

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Olympic Football squads for the 16 teams participating at the 2008 Olympics:

Squads for the 2008 Olympic Football Tournament can be submitted till 23rd July. As the remaining squad lists are published, they will be added to the site and linked to from the list below.

Group A

Argentina
Australia
Ivory Coast
Serbia

Group B

Japan
Netherlands
Nigeria
USA

Group C

Belgium
Brazil
China
New Zealand

Group D

Cameroon
Honduras
Italy
South Korea

Also See:

Beijing 2008 Olympic Football Tournament Preview

From Soccerlens.com - Football News