THE two-week-old China Super League is under mounting pressure to improve its image following incidents of pitch violence and a rash of refereeing errors.

　　At the end of last Sunday's match between Shanghai Shenhua and Chongqing Lifan, Yu Tao, the young forward from Shenhua Club was knocked in the face and swallowed his tongue after an intentional foul from Shi Jun, a Lifan player.

　　"After he fell down, the players gathered to surround him which stemmed the flow of air. I saw his mouth and nose filled with blood. He could have drowned in his own blood," said Jurgen, the new team doctor of Shanghai Shenhua.

　　He rushed to disperse the crowd and turned Yu over. The player was in a coma after suffering the injury.

　　Jurgen appeared fearful even after saving Yu's life. Yu is the second player he has saved from death.

　　"But the referee did nothing after such a dangerous foul," said Jurgen. "You can see how malicious the foul was, " said Xiao Zhanbo, a Shenhua player. "I thought his neck was cut open when I saw the blood gushing out."

　　But the pitch violence did not stop. Lifan's Zhou Lin elbowed Shenhua's forward Martin in the head, knocking him unconscious. The referee did not penalize the Lifan player.

　　There have been yet other cases. During a match between Sichuan Guancheng and Beijing Hyundai two weeks ago, Guancheng's Liu Jianyou suffered a serious fracture after being kicked by Hyundai's Sui Dongliang.

　　Mired in on-field violence and "black whistles", the China Super League is finding it hard to lift the country's sluggish football market out of a mounting credit crisis at a time when the number of spectators is declining.

　　Yan Shiduo, a founder of the China Super League and vice-chairman of the China Football Association was welcomed by jeers and shouts of "black whistles" from the crowd at the opening ceremony of the season in Tianjin.

　　"The coming of the Super League changes nothing. Player are the same, referees are the same and the refereeing errors and pitch scandals are the same too," said Wang Boxiong, a fan of Shanghai Shenhua.

　　The number of spectators so far this season at Shanghai Shenhua's games has dropped to 16,000 compared with 19,000 in the former Jia A League last year. About 70 per cent of the seats were empty.

　　"The ticket income is not even enough to pay the bonus of our players when they win a match," said an official from Shanghai Shenhua. China's football giant pays a bonus of millions of yuan when the team wins an important match.

　　China's failure to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games and the overall lackluster performance of its players has caused Chinese fans to switch to watching football matches in Britain and Italy on television.

　　The absence of sufficient crowds of spectators is putting Chinese football in danger. According to its contract, Siemens - the sponsor of the China Super League - will only pay half its sponsorship fee if over 60 per cent of the seats in the stadiums are empty.

　　It seems the China Football Association has a lot of ground to make up. In its first year of life, it is struggling to survive the diseases it has inherited - pitch violence and "black whistles".

　　By Shaq Lee

　　Shanghai Star. 2004-05-27