In 2006, the Australian national soccer team moved from the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as they hoped the higher quality of the Asian game would improve the standard of their players.

Now the Chinese soccer team is set to do the reverse, seeking a lower quality of football in the Southern Hemisphere. Xie Yalong, the president of the Football Association of the People's Republic of China said "We know that the Chinese football team is something of a joke at the moment. We hope that by playing teams such as the Cook Islands and Kiribati, we may have a better chance than when playing footballing giants such as Uzbekistan."