"Other countries watch their own teams play matches, we watch our own referee hand out cards." That line, posted on Chinese social media platform RedNote, sums up exactly where Chinese football stands in 2026.
China hasn't qualified for the World Cup since 2002 — their only appearance, which ended in the group stage without a single goal scored. Twenty-four years later, nothing has changed. So instead of sending off a squad, Chinese fans are rallying behind the one national representative they do have at the tournament: referee Ma Ning.
Nine yellows, three reds, and a nickname that stuck
Ma, 46, earned the moniker "Card Master" in 2015 when he issued nine yellow cards and three reds in a single Shanghai derby. At home, he's been heckled, cursed at, and considered a divisive figure for most of his decade-long career. Now, suddenly, he's a source of national pride.
The transformation is genuinely funny. Hashtags related to Ma have racked up millions of views. Lenovo and Hisense — two of China's biggest brands — have signed him up for sponsorships. Since opening his RedNote account last month, he's gained over 210,000 followers. His first post was a photo outside an airport with the caption "Let's go!" The response: "His luggage is probably all filled with yellow and red cards."
Ma is no token appointment, to be fair. He's been a FIFA-certified referee since 2011, regularly officiates AFC Champions League matches, and made his World Cup debut in Qatar four years ago as a fourth official. He's accompanied at this tournament by assistant referee Zhou Fei and video assistant referee Fu Ming.
The bigger picture isn't pretty
China's failure to qualify isn't bad luck — it's the outcome of a decade of mismanagement. The Chinese Super League once splashed enormous money on foreign stars to rival Europe's biggest spenders. Xi Jinping publicly declared three wishes in 2011: qualify for the World Cup, host it, win it. A government blueprint targeted becoming a "first-class soccer superpower" by 2050.
What followed instead: financial chaos, alleged high-level corruption, a pandemic, and a property crisis that gutted the economy and the sport along with it.
So yes, China is watching a referee at the World Cup. "I only know famous players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, and Mbappé," said one fan who admitted she doesn't follow football — then added she'd be tuning in anyway, specifically to count Ma's cards. With a 12 to 16-hour time difference, Chinese fans are setting alarms not for their national team, but for their national official.
"(Ma) is our only one going to the World Cup, I think we will support him," Beijing fan Ted Cui told CNN. He called Ma "one of the best referees in China and even in all of Asia." That's probably true. It's also, for Chinese football, a genuinely sobering sentence.
