CHINA: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - Beijing fans dressed up in their Barcelona colours and turned out to watch the Catalonian team training for the first match of their Asian tour

Barcelona fought off jetlag to give delighted Chinese soccer fans a hint of what to expect in their upcoming match against Beijing Guoan on Sunday (August 5). The team kicked off the first day of their Asian tour on Friday (August 3) with a practice session in Beijing's Fengtai stadium. They will play three friendlies on this visit. After Sunday's match, their nine-day tour of Asia will see them move on to play Yokohama Marinos in Japan days two later. On August 10, they take on the Mission Hills Invitation XI in Hong Kong. This tour has sparked off controversy amongst the team. On Wednesday (August 1) Italy fullback Gianluca Zambrotta joined France defender Lilian Thuram in questioning the wisdom of the tour. Some of Barca's players, including Ronaldinho, blamed last August's two-week pre-season tour to the United States and Mexico as one of the reasons for their poor showing in the last campaign. They said the punishing schedule of promotional events, travelling and friendly matches disrupted their training so they were not at peak fitness for when the season kicked off. Many fans turned out in style, dressed in Barcelona's colours for Friday's practice session and organisers will put in an extra 6,000 seats for the match itself to take the capacity up to 35,000. Many Chinese soccer fans are avid followers of foreign leagues and prefer them to their domestic league. "Through the game and the tactics I can learn a lot of things. You can say that it's not only exhilarating, I love the tactics, and everything that goes along with it. I think football is wonderful," said Xu Hua, a University student in Beijing. Many of the crowd were students who were unable to obtain match tickets but travelled for hours to Beijing just to be able to watch the practice session. One fan explained that he liked soccer because he liked the idea that you can never go back on yourself. "You can't go back, it's like this. You can't go back on yourself, you can't invade your opposition's goal, you can't send the ball behind you, you see? I will never regret my decision, I will always support Barcelona!" said Cheng Sijia who took a fifteen-hour train journey to able to watch this practice session. The match will form part of the celebration for the one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which starts on August 8. Beijing authorities are planning to make an example of this match as a drill for next years Olympics and are threatening to detain fans who swear at the match as a way of stamping out the habit. Police will be positioned at each stand filming the crowd, looking for evidence of swearing, fighting or throwing trash. The Chinese government is worried that swearing and other "uncultured" behaviour like spitting in public and pushing will embarrass the country at next year's Olympics, and has been running campaigns to get people to be more "civilised".

ITN Source | August 4, 2007

Tags:. .asia. .journey. .crowd. .evidence. .dressed