LONDON, March 6 (Xinhua) --- This summer West Bromwich Albion, one of England's top flight clubs, will travel to Shanghai, a journey that will be a far cry from their last visit to China almost 40 years ago.

In 1978 their journey took 90 hours, starting from London Heathrow Airport on a flight that required stops in Rome, Bahrain, Calcutta to Hong Kong and then a train ride to Guangzhou and another flight to Beijing.

WBA, affectionately known as the Baggies, on May 19, 1978, defeated the Chinese national team 2-0 at Beijing's Worker's Stadium in front of a crowd of 89,400, among whom was the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, "the architect" of China's reform and opening up drive which has developed China into world's second biggest economy.

Even then there was a passion in China for football, but only in recent years has there been a revolution in the sport. You can taste it after the Chinese Super League kicked off last weekend at the Worker's Stadium, the home ground of Beijing Guo'an.

So why is the journey to the country's emergence as a global superpower in football taking as long as the proverbial slow boat to China?

It's a question I posed in April 2017 to Stephen Perry just weeks before I left for Brazil to cover the World Cup tournament. Perry is one of Britain's top experts on China, and the best person to quiz about the future of football in the worlds most populous country. It was, after all, 12 years since the Chinese national team had made its only appearance in the World Cup finals. It seemed that we were floating farther away from the world's top spiriting spectacle, held every four years.

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