Top official from China Football Association (CFA) voices the depression over the national football team's failure into the 2006 World Cup finals, to be held in Germany from June 6 to July 6.

"I regret that our nation's football team failed to book a spot at the World Cup," Zhang Jilong, vice-president of CFA and also member of the German World Cup Organizing Committee, told a press conference on Monday when the nation's leading online media company Sina launched its World Cup website 2006.sina.com.cn.

With 101 days to go before the kick-off of the football extravaganza, Sina becomes the first domestic online media group to open a World Cup-oriented website.

With the nation's super league struggling with rampant match fixing, gambling and bribery the number of spectators and TV audiences has decreased remarkably in recent years,

The presence of a top official from CFA sends a message that the body is increasingly relying on online media to deliver domestic and world football news to internet users and revive the interest of fans, many of whom are losing their enthusiasm.

The CFA is also trying to use the World Cup as a chance to rebuild the game's image. China's elimination from the Asian qualifiers has been a setback.

"The development of China's football is still far away from what fans expect. We have a lot of work to do. I know lots of fans are feeling bad when they are reading World Cup news irrelevant to China," Zhang said.

"I hope everybody is tolerant. It is a hard period for us now. I believe all people working on the football field, even those like staff from the Sina company, should work together to get through the difficulties."

Cao Guowei, CEO of Sina, said his company is in sole partnership with Team China and has been working closely with CFA to deliver more domestic football news to fans.

Though Team China has no chance to compete at the World Cup finals, Cao said Sina still plans to invest huge sums in the World Cup website campaign, bidding to establish the biggest World Cup platform for Chinese football fans.

"We are going to invest 50 million yuan (US$ 6. 25million) in setting up of the website. We are going to buy news from world-famous agencies and speed up marketing development. The money invested is 20 million more than that invested in the Athens Olympics' programme.

"We hope to attract more fans to enjoy football. After the World Cup, I think more and more Chinese people will pay attention to the nation's football," said Cao.

China is now in the process of fighting for a spot at next year's Asian Cup finals.

Zhang is highly confident of China's chances of qualifying for the Asian Cup 2007 finals.

"It's a good draw for China," said Zhang, who believes Zhu Guanghu's team and Iraq will progress from Group E and qualify for the finals of the competition, which take place next summer in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Of our opponents, only Iraq is a strong team. With this draw we look sure to go through and the group games will be very nice with the competition between China and Iraq.

"But we're not afraid of being in the same group as Korea, Australia and Saudi Arabia. If we want to qualify for the next World Cup we will have to face these teams sooner or later."

But the nation's bid for a finals ticket suffered a blow on Wednesday as they were upset 2-1 by Iraq.

Thanks to a 2-0 win over football minnows Palestine at the opening match, China now have three points from two matches.

The failure casts increasing doubts over the nation's ability to challenge the region's big guns if they want to make it into the next World Cup.

(China Daily March 3, 2006)