China has achieved global acclaim in many fields in recent decades, but when it comes to football, it is always a different story. As a myriad of hard-core Chinese fans eagerly follow World Cup in Brazil in front of TV, they keep asking one question: Why a gigantic country of 1.3 billion is so poor at soccer that it fails to send 11 players on a world stage?

When asked what disappointed them most at a national level, the answer from a certain amount of Chinese is the country's men's soccer team. China reached the World Cup for the first time in 2002 thanks to the absence of regional rivals, because Japan and South Korea as co-hosting nations automatically entered the matches. But even under the direction of head coach Bora Milutinovic, the squad failed to score one goal.

There is a popular joke widely circulated online these days. "Why is the Chinese men's soccer team so bad?" one asked. The punchline: "The allocated time for sports classes has been appropriated by the teachers of other classes."

This joke gets right down to the heart of the matter. Football, basketball or baseball players are usually superstars on campus in Western countries like the US and the UK. Kids in Brazil are good at playing football even before they began to study in primary schools. But in China, we have sparse playing fields and schools give more attention to academic exams than physical education.

For another thing, Chinese soccer fans are not stimulating the nation's football in a rational and helpful way. Certainly, they are as zealous as their foreign counterparts toward World Cup matches. Even though China cannot root for itself this year, Chinese football fans, in order to cheer for the games in Brazil, bought falsified doctor's notes online to escape work after a long night's cheering and drinking. But when it comes to support for their national team, some fans have seemingly gone to extremes due to their disappointment. The uproar staged by a sizable number of furious fans, after the Chinese squad was defeated by Thailand's team in a shocking 5-1 loss last year reflected this picture of disdain.

Some argue that Chinese soccer has lost its direction, spirit and ideal. But it's noticeable that we haven't given up efforts. Chinese President Xi Jinping as a soccer fan once said that his three big wishes are that the Chinese national team would enter the World Cup finals, China would host the World Cup and win the World Cup championship.

In order to realize these goals, China needs to encourage the sport among kids and teens, gradually build its homegrown soccer fan culture, continue its efforts to crackdown on soccer corruption and explore effective ways to revamp professional soccer clubs. Let's keep hoping.

Ding Li, a football fan based in Beijing