Chinese great Hao Haidong has attacked the state of football in the country after Gao Hongbo's side were handed a morale-sapping 1-0 defeat in World Cup qualifying by war-torn Syria on Thursday evening.
The loss meant China have only picked up one point from their first three matches of the final phase of Asia's qualification campaign for Russia 2018, and already trail group leaders Iran by six points in the battle for the one guaranteed place in the finals.
But it was the defeat by a team from a country that has been riven by civil war for more than five years that has seen the national team lambasted by a public frustrated by the team's continued lack of success.
China have not qualified for the finals of the World Cup since 2002 -- when they made their only appearance at the tournament -- and Hao, who was part of the squad that played in South Korea 14 years ago, was among the fiercest critics.
"You could see that Syria were better than us in terms of football intelligence and the ability to read the game," Hao, China's all-time leading scorer, said on social media.
"We didn't have any tactical system, either in the game or in our entire football system. How can a player like Ren Hang, who hasn't played for months, be in the squad? The management of this team is a joke.
"Hope and disappointment are two things that can be manipulated. Why are we disappointed with this result? We haven't qualified for the last three World Cups, not even for the final round of qualification. Criticising the team on this one game is not enough, there are deeper reasons this is happening."
China only advanced to the final phase of Asia's qualifying tournament for Russia 2018 by the narrowest of margins and they have progressed to this stage of the competition for the first time since qualifying for 2002.
The sport has been in a state of crisis for more than decade. At youth level the nation has struggled to make an impact at continental level while the senior national side has not gone beyond the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup since losing in the final on home soil to Japan in 2004.
Despite this, the global profile of Chinese football has increased over the past 18 months with the influx of high-profile, big-money signings from overseas, but Hao stressed that the arrival of foreign stars was doing little to improve the national side.
"The quality of the football can't be improved simply by hiring big name foreign players," said Hao. "This is not real development, it's just entertainment. It has nothing to do with the real football quality of this country.
"Nowadays, Chinese players are also earning tens of millions [of yuan] but this bubble always bursts when they play in national team competitions."