A football team belonging to a newspaper in the eastern Shandong Province challenged the Chinese Olympic team to a play-off match in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, claiming they would award the Olympic team 100,000 yuan if it wins.

This challenge was published on the front page of the Peninsula Morning Post yesterday after the Chinese Olympic team lost a match against Oman. The disgraced team members and some of its retired players regarded the challenge an insult and slammed the newspaper through Weibo microblogs.

But the newspaper officials said today that they really meant it and their team was practicing hard for the match and they believed they could beat the national team.

As the Chinese Olympic team responded angrily and deplored that the majority of Chinese netizens sided with the newspaper. Its chief coach, Miroslav Blazevic, said, "only an idiot would talk like that."

Many Chinese netizens expressed their disappointment for the national team's management and training methods well as their attitude towards the challenge.