There is a saying about how soccer is perceived in three big nations: Americans are not interested in watching soccer games but are good at playing it; Chinese like watching it but are poor players; Indians are neither fond of it nor able to play it. It is a kind of black humor but it also tells the truth.

[Xinhua photo]

A foreigner who is visiting Beijing or Shanghai, or any other major city in China, will be amazed to see how obsessed the Chinese are about the World Cup despite their national team not playing in the tournament. Newspapers, TVs and social media sites are awash with World Cup-related commentary, photos, video footage, animations and commercials.

Even the official Central TV station, which is usually dominated by political and economical news and reports about government officials’ activities, devote large chunks of time to live broadcasts of the games. Provincial stations also bombard TV viewers with interviews, guessing games and lotteries. Celebrities and sports stars join students and housewives in radio and TV studios to express their joy and disappointment from watching the World Cup. Men relish talking about the performance on the pitch. Women take delight in gossiping about handsome players. Billboards and huge screens flash images of soccer stars everywhere – at office buildings, hotels, restaurants, bars, railway stations and airports. Companies reschedule work hours to ingratiate employees who burn midnight oil watching the games. Cellphone users even receive messages offering forged medical notes for exhausted fans to ask for sick leave from their employers. Walking down the streets and alleys in the Chinese cities in the early morning twilight and hearing shouts of “shoot, shoot” or “a goal” drift out of the windows, one would feel in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo rather than in Beijing or Shanghai.