Ready To Rumble

	2002 FIFA World Cup Special Coverage from TIME Brazil Carves Up Turkey Weblog: Germany vs. Brazil equals a clash of football cultures • Meet TIME's World Cup squad --> The Ultimate Samba Brazil beats Germany 2-0 to cap a World Cup 2002 filled with upsets, controversy and human drama The Final Tally Assessing the good, the bad and the ugly of the Cup that was The Morning After South Korea and Japan must now ponder if the World Cup was worth footing the bill Moving on Up TIME analyzes some of those players who excelled and looks at how they increased their market value Why Some Teams Just Can't Win Although the pre-Cup form book predicted otherwise, Brazil and Germany — the usual suspects — turned up in the final more stories >>

Pop quiz: what do gunpowder and football have in common? According to Chinese historians, both were invented in the Middle Kingdom. Of course, China created gunpowder and then famously forgot the recipe, leading to humiliating defeat by foreign powers. Its football history has been similarly ignominious: proud creation followed by a millennium of undistinguished play.

But after centuries of stagnation and four heartbreaking decades of failing to qualify for the World Cup, China is participating in the finals for the first time ever. Eager as always to flex its muscle on the international stage, the nation is now out to prove that it is a force to reckon with even on the soccer pitch. "If we advance in the World Cup, we will show we are a country that should be taken seriously," says Wu Qing, a 26-year-old Shanghai native who is one of 25,000-plus Chinese gathering in South Korea, the single largest contingent of fans from any visiting country. "This is not just a sports event to us. It means so much more."

Poor China. All it wants is a little respect. Winning the bid to host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing did a lot to stroke the national ego. So did the long-awaited entry into the World Trade Organization last year. Unfortunately, the nation's hopes for dazzling the football world are hampered by a few unavoidable realities. Like the fact that of the 32 teams playing in the World Cup, China is listed lowest in the fifa world ratings. Or that China made the finals largely because of a lucky draw that enabled it to avoid matchups with stronger squads like Iran and the United Arab Emirates. To make it past the first round, China must now overcome a group that includes powerhouse Brazil and feisty Turkey. And the most damning evidence of all, an admission by China's own national team coach: "Some countries have a natural intuition for football. The Chinese?" With that, he simply shakes his head.

It is an irony keenly felt by China that the coach who guided the nation to its first World Cup is not himself a Chinese. Bora Milutinovic, the shaggy-maned Serbian, has led four other countries to the finals. At first he was lampooned by the Chinese media for his unorthodox "happy football" philosophy. After all, Chinese sports are supposed to be all-work-no-play. "Time off?" laughs a member of the national squad. "That's not a concept our football association understands." Milu, as the coach is known in China, changed all that. Forgoing endless rote drills, he encouraged his team to relax so their mental fitness would match their technical prowess. "When I first met my team, they treated the ball as their enemy," says Milutinovic, shoveling fried rice into his mouth during a lunch at which his Chinese squad sticks to eating spaghetti. "My goal was to teach them to love the ball—and life—once again." Milu's training regimen included a healthy dose of Hollywood blockbusters and even an occasional pint at a local pub. This laid-back approach apparently worked, with China beating Oman 1-0 last October to clinch its World Cup berth. Milutinovic went from being a foreign devil who needed riot police to protect him a few months after he signed on in 2000 as coach, to the nation's most beloved big-nose. Capitalizing on the lovefest, he reportedly earns more than a million dollars a year hawking everything from rice wine to English-language tapes.

Milu's no-worries approach, though, isn't shared by the estimated 750 million Chinese viewers expected to tune in to each of China's World Cup appearances. The incessant pressure, from carping newspaper headlines to exhortations by the national football association not to let the nation down, has deflated a squad that feels it has already succeeded by scoring a spot in the finals. "Getting to the World Cup makes me very proud," says midfielder Li Xiaopeng. "We've already made history." But earlier this month, after losing three consecutive warmup matches, weary team members posted a note on the Web, begging forgiveness should they flub their World Cup debut: "We are a new and weak team ... and we may upset and disappoint the public." Milu was furious, but one player says the Serbian doesn't understand the pressure the team faces. No one appreciates this better than the national women's team, which returned in disgrace from the 1999 World Cup after losing a penalty shoot-out to the U.S. Several players spent the next six months in bed, trying to excise memories of how they had shamed their country. "You feel like you have so many people depending on you," says Liu Ying, who had missed a penalty in the shoot-out. "You don't want to be the one who destroys all their hopes."

Yet just two decades ago, China had only a handful of straggly pitches; Ping-Pong got a bigger TV audience than football. Today, the domestic league has 10 teams and all the requisite football sideshows—from mafioso overlords to allegations of match fixing by dirty referees. The national team's star defender Fan Zhiyi and forward Yang Chen play overseas for European clubs. China now boasts more soccer fans than any other country. And don't call them wusses: in March, a mob in the central city of Xi'an was so incensed by a questionable call by the ref that it rioted, burning stadium seats and overturning a police car in the process. With such excitable fans, who can blame the national team for feeling a little nervy?

There's also the matter of China's long history of choking when it comes to the big games. In 1985, with elimination on the line, the team was overpowered by tiny colonial outpost Hong Kong. In 1989, on the brink of making the World Cup finals, China fell to an uninspired team from Qatar. Last year the team somehow managed to lose to the North Koreans. Indeed, China has assembled one of the most infamous losing records in football history. And yet, there's always Milu. The veteran coach has an impressive résumé of clutch victories. All four teams he previously guided in the World Cup—Mexico, Costa Rica, the U.S. and Nigeria—remarkably made it past the first round. Fan Zhiyi, who plays for Scottish club Dundee, describes Milu simply as "our secret weapon"—the legendary figure who "gives our team its fire." Who knows? The right mix of gunpowder, football and Serbian savvy could give China just the ego boost it needs.