Home And Away | Sycophantic handout to China football is a dangerous game for the United Kingdom
Chinese fans know football requires first aid not foreign aid to save the game from grubby politics and egomaniacal billionaires
Rewind to a year ago when then chancellor of the British government George Osborne was in China kowtowing like a Texas nodding donkey as he sought to cement the new golden era of Sino-UK economic ties.
Among the many flagship initiatives he used to sell (or sell it out, depending on your view point) the UK to China, was handing over £3 million (HK$30.7 million) of British taxpayers’ money to teach the Chinese how to play football.
He said the cash would fund training for a new generation of football stars; the money would flow through the Premier League and British Council’s ‘Premier Skills’ scheme, which since 2008 has helped teach the beautiful game in poor countries from Afghanistan to Zambia.
MPs and the media were in an uproar, declaring that giving UK taxpayers’ cash to the second richest country on earth, at a time when budgets for grassroots football in Britain were cut to the bone because of austerity, was a “tragically daft” waste of money.
Osborne insisted it was good value for money because it would “significantly increase” the country’s awareness of English football. He didn’t mention the sycophantic handout was really a large dollop of grease to rub into the palms of football-mad Xi Jinping, but we all knew what George meant.
