The Rise and Fall of Manchester United’s Chinese Sensation Dong Fangzhuo

From Manchester United’s latest sensation to a figure of ridicule on a reality show—whatever happened to Dong Fangzhuo?

Football is no stranger to tales of unfulfilled potential. Falling to pressure is a common fate, whether it be from peers, the players themselves or hard-to-please fans. But for Dong, the most intense pressure came from shouldering the burden of an entire football-obsessed nation on the other side of the world.

In 2004, introverted Chinese teenager Dong became the first East Asian player to sign for Manchester United. This was long before the newfound riches of the Chinese Super League had put the communist superpower on the footballing map.

Twelve years on—and still only 31—a player who was once held as China’s great hope has disappeared into obscurity. The story of talent unfilled is not a new one, but it is how drastically Dong’s career took a nosedive that makes this tale so striking.

Dong’s rise was meteoric. There were already Chinese players plying their trade abroad—but never with this glare of attention. Sun Jihai—now inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame—had moved to United’s neighbours Manchester City two years before Dong. This was different, however. This was the global superpower United.

“The size of Manchester United has a great deal to do with how Dong’s story unfolded,” Tom Byer, head of China’s football development, told Bleacher Report.

“I worked with Shinji Kagawa from a very young age [in Japan], and I could see he was destined for Europe. I am not saying that [Borussia] Dortmund are a small club, but the jump from Dortmund to United was too much. The same happened with Hidetoshi Nakata at Roma—he never quite looked as good as he did at Perugia. Park Ji-sung is the only exception, I suppose.”

Basketball and table tennis had long been dominant in China, but in the late 1990s, new TV deals gave Chinese viewers access to a new, exciting brand of English football. The Premier League was a compelling global product, and China fell in love with it quickly.

The most commercially active English clubs were aware of their exposure in Asia and the opportunity to win over millions of new fans. It was a natural extension to look for their own Asian superstar, and Dong was that man for United.

“He was purchased at sort of a high time for Chinese football, but he was far from an established player. He was only 18 and had just played a handful of league matches,” Brandon Chemers, editor-in-chief of Wild East Football, told Bleacher Report. “There’s the feeling that he was only signed to sell shirts.”

That cynical view was commonplace in England at the time. The foreign influx from more established footballing nations in the ’90s was still a new concept. The idea of a player coming from China was alien at that time.

A club of United’s stature had their pick of Asian players. Dong had plenty of attributes that appealed to the physical nature of the Premier League, and he quickly stood out as a strong option.

“He went straight into the reserves and was tipped to do big things,” former United under-18s coach Paul McGuinness told Bleacher Report. “He was a strong player—really strong. That is what struck us, that a player from Asia would have that level of strength.

“Not many people know this, but we had experience of Chinese players before, so we had an idea of what to look out for.”

Fourteen years before Dong’s arrival, there was Su Maozhen—a trialist who was identified by United legend Sir Bobby Charlton. Su’s experience offers valuable insight into what Dong would have first encountered at United.

“I was with the Chinese under-16 national team, and we toured in the UK,” Su told Bleacher Report. “Sir Bobby Charlton came to see us play. He had soccer schools in China back then. The project was organised by Margaret Thatcher and the Chinese government—it was important.”

Su impressed in his trial, and Charlton picked him to train with United. In 1989, he returned for a three-month spell with United’s under-16 squad but suffered a broken ankle that scuppered his chance to impress. United paid for the operation, however, and Su’s story continued a couple of years later.

“I came back in 1991,” Su says. “I lived in Salford, near the Cliff training ground. It was so exciting. Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson, David Beckham, you name it—we trained with them. I still remember my landlady, Brenda. Sir Alex Ferguson took me training with the first team, and he told me, ‘One day, Su, you …

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