"Do you blog today?" is becoming the commonest greeting among Chinese football players these days after the trend started last year.

 

Chinese football players, more often related to rougher images, showed their tender side in their online "home", the blogs.

 

They constructed the pages elaborately, with pictures, videos and music. For example, Chinese internationals and twin brothers Sun Ji and Sun Xiang decorated their blog, named "Ji-Xiang (the combination of their given names means lucky and happy in Chinese) Brothers", with pictures of their scoring in domestic league matches and international games as well as video clips showing their trial training in Dutch first division club PSV Eindhoven.

 

Although variant in content, all the blogs provide the players with a place to communicate with their fans as players post articles speaking their mind quite frankly.

 

International Gao Lin received a great deal of praises for his blog page titled "He Who Deserts Fans Will Be Deserted."

 

Chinese footballers' blogs are popular, especially those from the famous ones.

 

The Sun brothers see 960,000 hits on their blog and China defender Du Wei's "Gentlemen Love Football" has an even better record of 1,800,000 hits. Some of their blog pages list within top five in the blog channel at Chinese portal Sina.com.

 

Some players were grateful of blog as they felt support and love from their fans through it.

 

"Time flies by. Wish a better tomorrow for you and me," former international goalkeeper Liu Yunfei said in a blog named "Never Give Up", expressing his gratitude for his fans.

 

Liu refused to return to his club Shanghai Shenhua since May last year until the angry club threatened to kick him out. He is waiting for a transfer now.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2007)