“Dongxie Talks Football” Solidifying the Foundation of Physical Fitness, Fueling the Comprehensive Revival of Chinese Men’s Football!
As a high-intensity, high-contact team sport, football is filled with running, physical battles, and transitions throughout the 90 minutes—all of which depend on a solid foundation of physical fitness. In contrast, China’s current football environment tends to overemphasize technique, tactics, and match results, often neglecting the foundational capability of fitness. At the youth level, short-sighted training approaches lead to inadequate physical development; at the professional level, players frequently suffer from physical exhaustion, struggle to maintain their running, and fail to keep up with the pace of matches. The popularity of marathons reveals the enormous potential for promoting national fitness and endurance development. Chinese men’s football must abandon its impatience, deepen its focus on physical foundations, and place sustained, steady physical training at the core of its development.
Looking at the gap between world football and Chinese men’s football, the most obvious and fatal issue is the shortfall in physical fitness. The pace of professional football continues to accelerate, physical collisions grow ever more intense, and top players cover over 10,000 meters per match on average. Their sprints, recoveries, and tackles in critical moments all rely on abundant physical reserves. Yet Chinese players, in continental competitions, often show a marked decline in fitness in the second half—their movements lose coordination, and their decision-making errors increase. On the surface, this appears to be a lack of technique or awareness, but at its root, it is insufficient physical preparation that prevents them from matching the intensity of high-level matches. Even with advanced tactical plans and refined technique, without a solid physical foundation, everything else becomes irrelevant.
Fitness is the indispensable “hard currency” of football. It enables tactical execution, technical performance, and sustained concentration. Without solid physical conditioning, even the most perfectly crafted teamwork becomes fragile, and the strongest willpower succumbs to the limits of physical exhaustion. To significantly improve the competitiveness of Chinese men’s football, we must confront this shortfall head-on, embedding physical training into the entire system—from youth development to professional leagues.
As a relatively underdeveloped football nation, Chinese men’s football has no shortcuts. Only by starting with the basics of physical fitness can we lay a solid foundation for growth. Every late-blooming football power in the world has risen through the foundation of rigorous physical training. There is no magic in football, nor any secret to rapid success. The weaker the foundation, the more we need to focus on developing the most fundamental abilities. Fortunately, physical training has a low barrier to entry—it can be promoted and implemented regardless of geographical conditions, making it the most equitable and practical path to improvement, suitable for widespread implementation in school football, youth academies, and professional clubs.
Only when every football practitioner recognizes the importance of fitness, and every player develops a strong physical foundation, can Chinese men’s football gradually narrow the gap with top international teams, reverse its passive position, and achieve an overall improvement in strength. Abandoning impatience and focusing on basic fitness does not mean dismissing the importance of technique and tactics—it means returning to the essence of football, using the most fundamental efforts to build upward momentum for Chinese men’s football. This is the only path forward for a footballing nation seeking to break through.