As a history buff and a sports enthusiast at the same time, I recently discovered that the current situation of the three major sports balls in China today is strikingly similar to the situation in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. What kind of similarity is it? Listen to me slowly.
(a)
The situation in the last years of the Ming Dynasty can be summed up in one word, that is, "rotten", and the two words are "rotten". Look at those historical records in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there are the words "erosion" everywhere. What "Liaozuo erosion", "Shaanxi erosion", "Henan erosion", "Huguang erosion"...... And so on, the world of the Ming Dynasty can be said to be incomplete, and it is almost impossible to find a good place.
Today's three major balls, you can only use the word "rotten" to describe them. Like the Chinese men's football team, it is already rotten, and the men's basketball team is running wildly on the road of erosion, and even the women's volleyball team, which has always been proud of the Chinese people, can't withstand it. Only the Chinese women's basketball team is left alone, just like Sun Chuanting's Shaanxi border soldiers at the end of the Ming Dynasty, leaving the last glimmer of hope for people.
The characteristics of the erosion of the situation in the last years of the Ming Dynasty were that it was constantly refreshing the lower limit of people's cognition. The Qing soldiers were just making waves in Liaodong, do you think a group of Yidi clowns can still enter the customs no matter how much trouble they make? As a result, they really entered the customs and hit the city of Beijing. You think this must be the limit, right? Unexpectedly, a few years later, the Qing army went to Jinan, Shandong.
The same is true of the peasant army in Shaanxi. It turns out that they gathered people in Shaanxi to make trouble, do you think they will never make trouble in Shaanxi Province? So the peasant army really came out of Shaanxi and came to the Central Plains. You think that they are just robbing houses and robbing houses and robbing things, but you didn't expect that after a few years, the peasant army broke Luoyang City and killed the vassal king of the Ming Dynasty.
Similar to the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty, today's three major balls are constantly refreshing people's lower limits. Just like the Chinese men's football team, it lost to first-class Asian teams such as South Korea and Iran at the beginning, and then began to lose to second-rate teams such as Syria and Jordan. You don't think they will lose to Vietnam no matter what they say? However, they are really going to slap you in the face, and you will really lose to Vietnam.
The same is true for the Chinese men's basketball team. At the beginning, I occasionally lost to strong teams such as South Korea and Iran, but I always qualified for the Olympics. But slowly it became a problem to qualify for the Olympics, and it was impossible to get out at all. And they also began to lose to second-rate Asian teams such as Lebanon and the Philippines, and in the end, they could simply lose to the Japanese team.
By this year, China's three major balls are in an emergency, and only the Chinese women's basketball team can retain the Asian championship in the six events of the three major balls. No matter how rotten it is, how rotten can it be? Will it be so bad that all six teams will not be able to qualify for the next Olympics? No one knows this, just like no one knew back then whether the Ming Dynasty would perish.
(b)
If you compare them closely, you will find that there are many more striking similarities between today's sports three major balls and those of the last years of the Ming Dynasty.
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the generals who led the troops to fight could not fail, as long as they failed, they would be unlucky, and they would lose their officials and be dismissed, or their heads would fall to the ground. Why is this so? Huang Taiji once asked Hong Chengchou about this issue, and Hong Chengchou said that this was all forced by public opinion. If the party struggle in the court is too fierce, and the people who lead the troops suffer defeat, they will inevitably be fiercely attacked by officials of the other faction, and basically no one will be spared under verbal and written criticism.
The same is true for today's Big Three. The head coach of each team is naturally equivalent to the Liaodong Jinglu in the Ming Dynasty or the trilateral governor of Shaanxi. When a manager loses, he will step down and will never give you a chance to regroup and make a comeback. Even a famous coach like Lang Ping of the Chinese women's volleyball team is like this, once he loses, he will be swept out of the house immediately. Compared with the head coach of the Brazilian women's volleyball team, Guimarães, the old man has been in this position for 20 years, and has suffered a lot of defeats, such as losing to the Chinese women's volleyball team at home at the Rio Olympics, such a tragedy has not been able to shake his throne. How can Brazilians be so tolerant and generous?
The result of frequent changes is often that one crab is not as good as one crab, and it is not as good as the original one after changing for half a day. Just like in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, how many generals who fought in Liaodong were removed and beheaded? In the end, everyone pondered: Ah, Yuan Chonghuan did the best job back then, and the ones who came up behind couldn't even catch up with half of him.
The same is true for the three balls. At that time, Yugoslav Milu led the Chinese men's football team out of Asia, but lost three games and three times in the World Cup, so Milu was disgraced. Next, the head coach changed so much stubble, and looking back, no one had Milu's good results.
Obviously, the reason why the head coach of the three major balls frequently leaves class is also because of infighting, and the head coach often represents the interests of a certain faction within the Football Basketball and Volleyball Association. If your team fails, it will naturally give the other faction an excuse to attack you, and in such a situation, it is simply impossible not to get out of class.
Many people have explained that the dynasty died because of party struggle, and party struggle was indeed an important factor in the demise of the Ming Dynasty. It has become a common phenomenon for ministers in the Ming Dynasty to form cliques for personal gain, and everyone values the interests of their own small circle above everything else, and does not think about the survival of the country and the society at all. Fight against people in other circles, dismantle Taiwan, and do everything they can. If everyone spends all their energy on internal friction, it will naturally be a mess externally.
The same is true of China's three major balls, and everyone has enough energy to fight inwardly. Take the Chinese women's basketball team as an example, in the first half of last year, the Li Meng and Zhang Long incident suddenly appeared, and a large group of fans desperately called for a complete ban on Li Meng on the Internet. Why do these people want to die for the number one star of the Chinese women's basketball team? Is it because they all have a habit of moral purity? Of course it won't be like this, the reason is just that with Li Meng, the Sichuan women's basketball team can't lose, and others can't win the championship, so some people are deliberately trying to do the whole thing, kill Li Meng, and their team can win the championship.
The fans of the Chinese women's volleyball team are now divided into the Tianjin Party and the Jiangsu Party, and the national players are basically from Tianjin and Jiangsu, so the fans in both places are desperately attacking each other's players. Fans in Jiangsu belittled Li Yingying and Yuan Xinyue to nothing, while fans in Tianjin desperately attacked Diao Linyu and Cai Bin, and the two sides fought fiercely. Do you think it's just the fans fighting out of boredom? In fact, if you look carefully, you will find that there are media people behind this who are actively mixing in the world for fear of chaos, so who is standing behind the media people?
(c)
When it comes to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, everyone admits that the factor of corruption is extremely important. The corruption in the last years of the Ming Dynasty can be said to have reached its peak, and the Qing officials are no longer a problem, but a problem of whether there are any. Moreover, the problem of corruption has reached unbelievable proportions.
Li Zicheng's army was under the city of Beijing, and the Ming army could not fight without pay. Emperor Chongzhen borrowed 10,000 taels of silver from his father-in-law Zhou Kui. Zhou Kui found his daughter Queen Zhou crying poor, and Queen Zhou had no choice but to take out 5,000 taels of private money to sponsor her father and let him lend it to the emperor. However, Zhou Kui actually withheld 3,000 taels of silver, and only took out 2,000 taels to pay to Chongzhen. It is truly astonishing that corruption is stingy to such an extent.
The level of corruption of the three balls has also begun to catch up with the end of the Ming Dynasty. The corrupt officials in the football world have been found out several times, from Xie Yalong and Nan Yong in the past to Chen Xuyuan, Du Zhaocai and Li Tie today, everyone has been corrupt one after another, and they have no hesitation. The middle-level cadres, coaches, referees, and players below have been arrested even more. It makes people feel that this Chinese football is really hopeless.
Basketball and volleyball are naturally difficult to stand alone, isn't the famous meritorious basketball coach Li Yaguang already in trouble? Of course, he won't be the only one in basketball, right?
Now, the original leader in the sports world has also been uncovered. Many facts have proved that Gou Ju is inescapable of taking responsibility for the festering of the three balls.
The reason why such an uncontrollable situation was formed in the last years of the Ming Dynasty was the chaos that inevitably occurred when the vitality of the super-stable system of the Ming Dynasty was about to be exhausted. The contradictions accumulated by the Ming Dynasty for more than 200 years have accumulated and cannot be resolved at all, so they can only be overturned and restarted. That's why we see the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
Of course, China's three major balls cannot be equated with the Ming Dynasty, but today's situation is also the inevitable result of the pseudo-professionalism that the three major balls have been promoting for many years and gradually cannot be carried out.
Since the nineties, the three balls began to try to reform professionally. However, this so-called "professionalization" is fundamentally different from professional sports abroad, and does not meet the standard of true professionalism at all. Just like football, the professional league has become a black hole of money laundering and gambling, and everyone from top to bottom uses this so-called professionalism to their own interests, and everyone does everything, just don't play seriously. In this way, football has become an eternal reincarnation, difficult to transcend, and has become the near-death appearance we see now.
Basketball is also slowly following in the footsteps of football. The CBA league is by no means a true professional league like the NBA, and it is not fundamentally different from the Chinese Super League in football. In the past, due to the existence of outstanding players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, Chinese basketball was barely visible, but now, there are no such players, and all the festers of basketball can no longer be covered, and they begin to gradually show themselves in broad daylight.
Of course, China's three major balls can still be saved, but we must be ruthless and do real reforms. We can no longer take the previous road of pseudo-professionalism, and if we want to go, we must take the road of real professionalism, so that all those who are engaged in this project can concentrate on playing in a down-to-earth manner, and do not have any more cranky thoughts. Only in this way can the three balls really rise. Otherwise, one day in the future, we may really see the terrible scene of China's three major balls losing the Asian championship and being excluded from the Olympic Games.