is football(soccer) very popular in China to watch and play?

[Cules 4 life]

i know basketball is big cuz of Yao..
preferably a Chinese guy but anyone is encouraged to answer!

[doober]

i dont know... but i know in iran, they like to watch soccer. lol

yao ming is in the rockets. i love the rockets, theyre my favorite team.

[Hottie_MR]

well yea. it is. i think.

[G.Cheung]

yeah of course its popular in china. my uncle owns a sports store there and the most popular things are always the soccer and basketball stuff. lots of people play soccer there and watching soccer is like how lots of people in north america watch a big game.

[macedonian]

I think that CHina, for good reasons and for political bs reasons, will rise in soccer. Thank goodness the people will buy into it for the good reasons though. The love of the sport, the excitement, etc... They wil do fine. Look how well Japan and Korea have done.

[G.Cheung]

maybe china will do what they did in '98 and qualify for the world cup again. theyve been doing pretty well in the qualifiers theyve played so far

[Scouser]

It will make it a whole lot more interesting when they do. For now, the best teams in Asia are Japan and the Koreas. I think Australia joined the division. There are also other worthy teams. Macedonian and I talked about this before, there has been notable progress.

[G.Cheung]

But with Australia in that group now it might be harder for the rest of Asia to qualify and compete with a more umm.. disciplined?(cant think of the word) football country