内容摘要：El Tupolev Tu-22M es un bombardero supersónico de ala de barrido y dos motores.

El Tupolev Tu-22M es un bombardero supersónico de ala de barrido y dos motores.

A Booster T1 robot from Booster Robotics prepares to kick a football during a demonstration to the Zhongguancun Forum at the Zhongguancun International Innovation Center in Beijing, China, on March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)It might be too late. China will be out of World Cup qualifying if it fails to beat Indonesia on Thursday. Even a victory may only delay the departure.

What’s the problem? China has 1.4 billion people, the globe’s second largest economy andlast year in Paris to tie the United States. Why can’t it find 11 elite men’s soccer players?The government touches every aspect of life in China. That top-down control has helped China become the largest manufacturer of everything from electronics to shoes to steel.

It has tried to run soccer, but that rigid governance hasn’t worked.“What soccer reflects is the social and political problems of China,” Zhang Feng, a Chinese journalist and commentator, tells The Associated Press. “It’s not a free society. It doesn’t have the team-level trust that allows players to pass the ball to each other without worrying.”

Zhang argues that politics has stalled soccer’s growth. And there’s added pressure since Xi’s a big fan and has promised to resuscitate the game at home. Soccer is a world language with its “own grammar,” says Zhang, and China doesn’t speak it.

“In China, the more emphasis the leader places on soccer, the more nervous the society gets, the more power the bureaucrats get, and the more corrupt they become,” Zhang adds.Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA.

But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream.“If you had asked me at the end of 2024 what my plans were, it was to get married, find a great job here in the U.S. and start a family,” said Saule, who hopes to work as a business data analyst. “Those plans are not applicable anymore. Ask me now, and the plan to leave this place as soon as possible.”

Saule and his fiancee plan to marry this summer, graduate a year early and move to Europe.This spring the Trump administration abruptly