Dominic Fifield talks to midfielder Li Tie who may attract billions of TV fans to watch his new club Everton.
The question prompted a knowing grin from his interpreter, but Li Tie barely batted an eyelid. How many people across China will be watching him play for Everton at Sunderland this afternoon? "Hard to say," he replied. "Probably around a billion. Perhaps more."
Everton may have a home-grown superstar in the making in the 16-year-old Wayne Rooney, but in Li they already boast China's celebrity answer to David Beckham.
"I can't go out back home without being mobbed," said the 24-year-old, who arrived from the Beijing-based Liaoning Bird on a year-long loan as part of the Merseysiders' new two-year sponsorship deal with Kejian, the telecommunications firm.
Li's face stares out from soft-drink cans and down from billboards across China, where he endorses everything from mobile phones to aftershave. His autobiography, released just before the World Cup, has already sold 100,000 copies. Andthe midfielder did enough in his 76-minute debut against Tottenham last weekend to suggest David Moyes has recruited a tidy player, too. Calm and composed on the ball, he buzzed effectively until the frenetic tempo caught up with him late on. His appearance - along with compatriot Sun Jihai for Manchester City at Leeds - marked the arrival of Chinese football in the Premiership.
"Maybe people do not realise it over here but in China everyone is football crazy," he said. "Now they follow Everton with that same passion."
China's professional football league was only established eight years ago and, while the standard is improving with the help of a sprinkling of around 50 foreign players and coaches - mainly eastern Europeans and the odd ageing Brazilian - the government is increasingly allowing the cream of the country's footballers to move abroad to hone their skills. Li and other teenage members of the Jianlibao side spent three years at the Brazilian club Atletico Paranaense in the mid-90s, developing their game in the Curitiba club's second string.
"We were only young and played reserve-team football, competitive stuff, and you don't get experience like that in China," said Li. "We may have a massive population back home but the economics of everyday life mean that grassroots football is not catered for at all. I was picked out at school to attend a special sports college when I was about eight years old, but I was lucky."
China may have failed miserably in their first World Cup - all three games lost without a goal scored - but Li still stood out and has 78 caps. "You can replace the Hao Haidongs and the Fan Zhiyis, but you can't replace Li Tie," said coach Bora Milutinovic. "He's a world-class player, though he may need time to settle into English football."
Sun, his international room-mate, had a brief spell alongside national team captain Fan Zhiyi with Crystal Palace. That may have been dogged by disciplinary problems, home-sickness and the club's descent into administration, but the pair remain in Britain with City and Dundee respectively. Li Wei Feng pre-empted Li Tie's arrival at Goodison Park by 24 hours; Zhang Enhua had a spell at Grimsby and Tottenham are still hoping to sign the striker Qu Bo.
"Crystal Palace's first game with Sun and Fan (a 1-0 win against Sheffield United) was televised to nearly a billion Chinese people watching around the world," said Ma Dexing, a journalist on the Chinese sports newspaper, Sports Weekly.
"More would tune in if Everton played their two Chinese in the Premiership." Yet, as Palace discovered, the sudden global audience does not necessarily open up a world of marketing opportunities. Replica shirt sales are hit by the bootleggers who mop up the relatively few Chinese fans eager to buy their adopted team's colours, while television revenues have, as yet, stopped with the Beijing government rather than filtering west.
Instead, English clubs have had to develop more innovative ways to tap the market. Newcastle this week announced plans to have their own club in Jia B - Hong Kong United could play at the 40,000-seat stadium in Happy Valley - which they would half-own, with sponsorship making it worthwhile. Everton have attracted Kejian with a shirt sponsorship worth £2 million over two years, and City's chief operating officer Chris Bird returned from a fact-finding tour of China last month. City were the most watched team on the main cable TV station in Shanghai last season thanks to Sun, but are challenged now by Everton.
Guardian Service
