After the Chinese national football team lost to Indonesia away on June 5, 2025, it completely lost the opportunity to advance to the 2026 World Cup. It missed the World Cup in 24 years, and its dream of rushing to the World Cup will be postponed for another four years.
I missed the World Cup in 20 years, and it was enough time to make a generation go from a passionate young man to a white-haired fan. But there are always some hot pieces in my memory: on a rainy night in Jinzhou, Dalian in 1997, the sound of the audience singing “Singing the Motherland” penetrated the rain screen; in 2002, street vendors sold all their red cloaks; in Russia in 2018, people who had never met each other in front of the large screen in the square hugged their heads and cried… These moments have long surpassed the victory and defeat and become cultural marks engraved in national emotions.
Now fans are more aware: they know the shortcomings of the youth training system, understand the confusion of the league mechanism, and can even accurately describe the technical characteristics of naturalized players. But when the national football team bus heads to the stadium, there will still be “Come on the Chinese team” in the stands; when the player falls, the cheering sounds will sound before the referee’s whistle; even if you lose, someone will always pick up garbage on the ground when the game ends – this is not blindness, but a nation’s stubbornness towards love: we can criticize, expect, but we will never turn around and leave.
Football is never a simple game of victory or defeat. It is a topic of conversation on the streets and alleys, a topic of father and son inheritance, and a secret code that instantly brings closer between strangers. In the past twenty years of storms, the support of fans is like a silent cornerstone, holding up the possibility of Chinese football moving forward. Because they know that as long as there are people in the stands and people on the side of the court, the spark of Chinese football will never be extinguished.
So for the best fans in the world, Xiaohongshu lit up the landmarks in Chongqing to pay tribute to Chinese fans.
I hope that the national football team can fight for the fans again at the end of this World Cup! Even if there is no hope of advancing to the World Cup.
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