The following two articles appeared in The Times as part of the buildup to the New Year's Day game between Everton and Manchester City at Goodison Park.
People's Republic of Merseyside The Times Monday 30 December 2002
by ASHLING O'CONNOR
Why the global focus will be Goodison on Wednesday as Everton benefit from having China in their hands
GOODISON PARK IS AN unlikely venue for the biggest game of league football on the planet. Particularly as it is between Everton and Manchester City. Everton struggled even to engage Merseysiders as they bumped along the bottom of the Premier League last season. That was before David Moyes and Wayne Rooney but more importantly, for the purposes of this story, that was before Li Tie.
Since the arrival in August of the China player, Everton can claim even larger global support than Manchester United. They are now the most popular football team in the world's most populous country — and it is just about to get bigger. On New Year's Day, Everton meet Manchester City, the only other Premiership side to field a Chinese player, Sun Jihai. It promises to be the most watched football match outside of a World Cup.
Interest in the game is immense. About 100 Chinese executives and journalists are making the 6,000-mile journey just to watch the two teams that are the toast of Beijing after signing (and playing) the biggest football stars in the People's Republic. The representatives of Kejian, the Chinese mobile phone company that sponsors Everton, and their corporate clients will be wined and dined by club officials while watching China's two favourite sons.
The return meeting of Sun Jihai, Manchester City's right wing back, and Li Tie, Everton's central defender, will be the talk of China's growing legion of football supporters and the business elite being drawn to the sport as a conduit between East and West.
Li Tie, the 24-year-old whom many fans wrote off as a commercial gimmick, will want to do better this time in front of his adoring audience. At Maine Road in August, Moyes substituted him after 25 minutes. Since then, however, he has been a regular starter alongside Thomas Gravesen and is admired for his workrate, possession and pinpoint passing. He will be hoping that Moyes gives him a starring role on Wednesday after returning to the starting line up on Saturday from a spell as substitute.
The match is likely to be shown on CCTV5, the state-owned national sports channel, which has bought the rights to one live Premier League match a week. It reaches 360 million people, more than the population of the United States. Football fever has taken hold in China since 330 million people watched the national team's World Cup debut match against Brazil this summer. Despite the disappointment of losing all three group matches, China's young are taking up football faster than any other sport. Everton have caught the wave just at the right time. Their first Premiership match of the season, against Tottenham Hotspur, was watched by an estimated 120 million. "Before the Kejian deal, Everton was one of the unknown Premier League clubs in China," Kegang Wu, director of Chinalink, a UK-based international trade consultancy, said. "Now most people say if they watch one Premier League match, it is Everton."
Mei Zhang is evidence enough of the surge of Chinese interest in Everton since Kejian became the shirt sponsor and threw in Li Tie and compatriot Li Wei Fung on a one-year loan. She gave up her course at Liverpool university to deal full time with the mountain of queries from Chinese newspapers, wire services and overseas supporters. "Now Everton is the most popular football team in China," she said. Li Tie is bigger than David Beckham by a long chalk, unable to go out in public in China (or Liverpool's Chinatown) without being mobbed. Mei herself receives 20 letters and 50 e-mails a day from China and finds it hard to keep up with the demand for information. She posts reports on Everton's Chinese language website, which is accessed by 500,000 people a day.
Wei Zhao, a 20-year-old student and dedicated member of Everton's burgeoning red army, said: "Before a Chinese player came here, nobody knew Everton. Now Everton is famous in China." Wei, whose English name is Richard, is one of a dozen Chinese nationals working for the club as stewards. There is a waiting list for the job.
His friends, Fiona Jiang, 19, and Ellen Feng, 24, are also stewards because they want to watch Li Tie but cannot afford tickets. "Since I have worked here, my parents at home watch the Everton game every time," Fiona, who became hooked on football after the World Cup in Japan and South Korea, said.
Whether by accident or design, Everton has become a window to the world's most populous nation. It helps that there is a big local Chinese community. Liverpool is twinned with Shanghai while its Chinatown is the oldest in Europe, dating back to the late 19th century. Just as the shipping industry first induced Chinese sailors to settle around the city's busy docks, football is the new Sino-British link.
Diane Graham, who runs an interactive software company operating in China, bought an executive box at Everton after the announcement of the Kejian deal. "This is our shop window," she said. "We can entertain Chinese business people here. We probably have around 100 through this box a season."
Her company, PRT Asia, pays £32,000 a season for the box but the return is far greater. "It is money well spent and I probably wouldn't be spending it at all if it weren't for the Chinese connection," Graham, a former lotteries manager at Tranmere Rovers, said. "I think next season at least half of these boxes will be taken up by Chinese businessmen." Graham is not the only one to have picked up on the potential to reach China through Goodison Park. Among the perimeter hoardings, the advert for Red Square vodka is written in both English and Chinese characters.
Joe Farley, owner of Wolly Wong's Chinese flavoured crisps, is Li Tie's kit sponsor and has taken the player under his wing. He also has an executive box. "One of the first things Chinese business people say to me when they come over is, can I get them tickets to the football?" he said. "My box is always full. I used to be on my own in there when we weren't doing so well."
And that seems to be the key to the success of this unlikely alliance. Everton are riding high after years in the doldrums and Li Tie has turned out to be a good acquisition. Moyes, who admitted that he saw him as a squad player at first, has chosen the Chinaman on merit above rivals for his position.
Evertonians have also taken to Li Tie, a well-mannered player off the field, possessed of a gutsy temperament on it. The most valuable player in China's C-League last season, he is surprisingly popular at a club not best known for racial tolerance. (Remember "Everton are white" chants when John Barnes signed for Liverpool.) However, Everton fans — in this purple patch at least — sing fondly of Li Tie from the stands, even if they find it difficult to rhyme his name with anything. "Naa, Naa, Naa, Na, Na, Na, Naa . . . Na, Na, Na Naa, Li Tie . . ." (to the tune of the Beatles' Hey Jude).
At least it is less jingoistic than the (admittedly creative) terrace chant devised by Manchester City fans for Sun Jihai. "Singing aye-aye-yippee Sun Jihai, singing aye-aye-yippee Sun Jihai, singing aye-aye-yippee, his dad's got a chippy, aye-aye-yippee Sun Jihai (to the tune of She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain).
In the wake of the first World Cup to be staged in Asia, Kejian's timing over its sponsorship of a Premier League club was impeccable. One of the biggest mobile phone makers in China, where there are an estimated 191 million handsets in circulation, Kejian wanted an association with top-flight football to improve its image.
Young people in China all wanted Nokias, while Kejian was seen as a bit uncool. Li Tie has changed that and exposed the company to new markets in Europe.
Everton is just one of the Premiership clubs looking to take advantage of the growing popularity of football leading up to the Women's World Cup next year.
Manchester City, Liverpool and Newcastle United are all talking about pre-season tours, following in the footsteps of the original western trailblazers, West Bromwich Albion.
Andy Hosie, Everton's head of marketing, said: "We have seen a huge increase in awareness in the Chinese community. It is difficult for us to comprehend the star status of these guys in China, where they are more popular than the likes of Beckham or Owen."
Hosie has local agencies looking for advertising opportunities in China and the club plans to finance academies to foster domestic talent. Scholarships at Everton will be offered to promising players to further forge links with China. "There must be ten David Beckhams in China that have just never been found," he said.
On Wednesday, hundreds of millions of people will not care less about David Beckham, Asia's adopted icon. They have two of their own to worship.
Eastern View The Times Monday 30 December 2002
by OLIVER AUGUST
MILLIONS OF CHINESE football fans will be watching Wednesday's Manchester City-Everton match on television to witness a clash between two of China's most famous players. Hu Bing, an official at the China Athletic Association, said: "The most important thing for us is to see whether the Chinese players will play from the beginning."
The young official himself is a Liverpool fan and his obsession with the Premiership has inspired him to seek a British government scholarship to study in Liverpool.
According to Mr Hu, it is still not clear whether state television stations will transmit the match. "If they don't," he said, "we will just find some hotel rooms with satellite television."
In Hong Kong, the former British territory, supporters will be crowding into Dicken's Bar, a sports bar in Causeway Bay, where barman Wrinky Lau is predicting a full house.
He said: "Both teams have a Chinese player, Li Tie and Sun Jihai. That's very exciting for us. It's good for Chinese players to show up in top-level games in the world."
For many Chinese the match is tinged with patriotism. The barman said: "We don't see the Chinese players in UK very often. But we are proud of them since it means they have reached top standard."
He compared the players to Yao Ming, the new Chinese superstar basketball player in the United States. Chiu Lo Wah, who visited the bar with friends, said: "I know two Chinese players will play in the match between Everton and Manchester City.
"During the World Cup I watched all of China's matches. I support all Chinese players because I am Chinese."
Asked about her interest in football, she said: "I used to play soccer myself, but just for fun. I'm not good at it. The field is too big and I can't quite make out where I am. But I like this bar for the atmosphere."