The date May 15, if anyone can remember, was a day of heavy rain and chilly winds. But to Chinese soccer, it was certainly more than that. Because from that day, the Chinese Soccer League entered into a new era: the so-called Super League. This, of course, is not the equivalent of the five famous premier leagues in Europe and although it might be an epoch-making day for Chinese soccer fans, their attitudes towards the celebration on that day proved to be as chilly as the weather.

The opening ceremony was held in Tianjin, thanks to advanced technology, even though it was thousands of miles away from Shanghai, I could still hear the boos from the stands when the chairman of the football association was making his address. It could be considered a "disruptive noise", as some official from the association later commented, but the crowd's behaviour might have been reasonable enough if we look at the recent behaviour of the Chinese soccer team.

Attempts to enter the Olympic Games in Athens, failed. Attempts to win in South Korea, failed. Attempts to get into the last World Cup, succeeded, but with the losing of three successive games in the first round, it was a shameful record. It was under all these conditions that the Chinese Football Association claimed that it was going to change its national division A league into a Super League.

No wonder there was such loud criticism at the birth of the CSL, if we compare the new-born body to a weak infant, it would be true to say: "That baby will die one day." But it is the last thing we want to say. Instead, whether a soccer fan or not, we all nourish the hope that the CSL will grow up healthy and become strong enough to be ranked among the best in the world in the future.

As we all know, goodwill is far from enough. The same is true with the name of the association. To just add a "super" tag serves no realistic purpose. What needs to be done urgently is the reform of the whole system and the organization.

When we speak of professional soccer, we are actually speaking of a professional operation, professional players, professional clubs and professional committees. However, it seems that China has only a group of professional fans at the present time.

We have to admit that during the past 10 years of the Chinese Division A League, development was uneven and a substantial part lagged behind. While the salaries of the players has increased dramatically, the system remained a child of the planned economy era. Furthermore, if we look further into the matter, we can find that behind the alarming expansion of the number of clubs, there was a huge amount of state-owned capital invested which, through loose supervision, resulted in some corruption and bribery off the pitch.

And, because some of the club managers are civil servants at the same time, the achievements of their clubs are closely linked with their political success. So they were always free to put enormous money into the club without sound consideration of the economic benefits. This has distorted the natural development of modern soccer. As a result, while players have become millionaires overnight and while a number of first-class world clubs, like Real Madrid have been invited to China to play with our teams and while there is superficial prosperity of the Super League, the real competitiveness of Chinese soccer is still at a low level.

We don't want any more random changes. Now is the time for us to start a fundamental reform of the soccer association. Put all the clubs in the hands of private capital, make the entire operation transparent in a market-economy way. In this way, the shareholders can have their voice in the development and budget of the clubs and the managers can learn to cherish every penny they spend on building the clubs.

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