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In the end an amazing 300 million people watched the team’s games on TV in China. With such massive figures it seemed the worlds most populous nation had arrived on the football scene.

Since then China has failed to qualify for two world cups, its club teams have failed in the Asian Champions League (when the rest of East Asia has soared) and the Chinese Super League has been rocked by one scandal after another.

So what’s happened in this latest case? Well it all started on September 28th in round 19 of the Chinese Super League. Beijing Guoan were taking on Wuhan Guanggu in a key match for both teams. Beijing were fighting for the league title and Wuhan to avoid relegation.

In the second half, Wuhan player Li Weifeng intentionally kicked the chest of Beijing Guoan’s Lu Jiang but the referee missed the incident. Lu Jiang jumped up and pushed Li over and was sent off for this. Meanwhile the match ended in a 1 all draw.

After the match Beijing Guoan complained over the incident and threatened to quit the league. The Chinese Football Association responded by handing down an eight match suspension to Li Weifeng and Lu Jiang along with a … fine.

It was only Li Weifeng’s second match for his new club and Wuhan had paid a lot of money for him so Wuhan decided to quit the League.

On The Alchemy Football Show on Saturday I spoke with Dapeng Liang, a Chinese football journalist for Goal.com and he revealed that the fallout from the incident has split both Wuhan and the nation.

“This incident has also sparked a protest in the city of Wuhan where fans are divided into two groups: some support the football federation and think quitting is only an excuse for Wuhan’s poor performance this season. While some fans believe that the FA, should be responsible for this.”

He then added that the “Chinese football has been under criticism from the fans and media saying the Chinese Football Association is very incompetent.”

You’ve got to wonder for how much longer these things can go on before irreparable damage is done to Chinese football.

Dapeng summed things up perfectly saying, “So many negative incidents have happened recently. Year by year Chinese clubs have little success in Asian club competitions, less and less fans are going to games to support their local teams and of course the match fixing scandals. So we must improve from now on!”