Michael Owen, the former England striker and 2001 Ballon d'Or winner, recently visited Rongjiang county in Guizhou province, China, to play in a match for the local amateur league Cun Chao, also known as the Village Super League. He scored twice in a 4-3 loss for Rongjiang Niubi, endearing himself to thousands of spectators, though many locals did not recognize him. May, a Rongjiang local whose family helps run Cun Chao, said: "Many people didn't know who he was. The older generation doesn't even know who David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo are."
Viral success of Cun Chao
Guizhou's amateur tournament became an unexpected viral hit in 2023, drawing tens of millions of views on social media. Tourists flocked to the rural community as crowds of over 10,000 watched farmers, construction workers, and students represent their village teams. The league's fourth season, which began in January 2025, featured 137 village teams. Its success inspired local governments across China to launch similar amateur leagues, turning amateur football into a national phenomenon with attendances exceeding many European professional leagues. Chinese leader Xi Jinping praised it in his 2024 new year's speech, saying it "presents a vibrant and flourishing China to the world."
Comparison to grassroots development
Yuming, a 24-year-old fan of Chinese Super League club Beijing Guo'an, said amateur leagues fill a "similar gap to college sports in the US and non-league football in England," noting that "the local feel is the single biggest attraction." However, experts remain skeptical about the leagues' potential to develop grassroots football. Mark Dreyer, founder of China Sports Insider, said: "The more successful it becomes, the more it's going to get co-opted by the state and the football association and the sports ministry. Then all of their bad decisions are going to start impacting these more organic leagues."
Top-down approach hinders progress
Poor governance has long plagued China's professional game. In 2016, the Chinese Football Association aimed to become a "world football superpower" by 2050, with 50 million players by 2020. Instead, a spending spree on international stars ended in club collapses and corruption scandals. China's men's national team ranks 91st in FIFA and failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. Dreyer said: "Football needs to be bottom-up, but China is fundamentally a top-down country. Everything stems from the top, so they focus on the elites instead of focusing on the base of the pyramid."
Amateur leagues as spectacle, not pipeline
Rowan Simons, a China football expert, noted that while Cun Chao emerged organically, copycat leagues were created by regional governments for tourism benefits. He said: "There still isn't a pathway to go from amateur through to professional." The leagues are not part of a larger pyramid connected to professional football, limiting their talent pipeline potential. Dreyer added that football is almost a "sideshow," with match days featuring food markets, half-time shows, and local cultural celebrations. Yuming described the matches as accompanied by "non-footballing activities ... which makes it more of a spectacle."
Record attendances
The most successful clone is Jiangsu Football City League (Su Chao), which consists of 13 teams. Its final in November 2024 drew 62,329 fans, just shy of China's domestic club record of 65,769. The league's average attendance in later rounds exceeded 30,000, compared to Ligue 1's average of about 27,500. Yuming said: "It's a great way to bring more people into a football stadium to see the beautiful game. Who knows, maybe our next generation of footballers might have gotten into football because they attended Su Chao games as a small kid?"
Community appeal
Dreyer doubts transformative potential but agrees that "anything that gets people playing or watching football is a fantastic thing." May captured the local sentiment: "These [players] are our own people; it all happens right here among us, and they're all our relatives and friends. Since the players are so closely connected to us, we pay much more attention than to the Chinese Super League, or even the World Cup."
