Soccer: Coming to terms with China

Chris Killen. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The language barrier was inevitable. Flat-hunting has been frustrating.

The travel is "demanding", the traffic "unbelievable" and the heat and humidity "shocking".

For All White Chris Killen, there have been many tests in China but a pair of pigeons in his soup were the limit.

Along with fellow World Cup All White Ivan Vicelich, Killen is slowly settling into life at FC Shenzen.

He has already notched a game-winning goal as the team have managed a win and a draw but predictably it is off the field where the biggest challenges have come.

"Every day after training, we all go to the team hotel restaurant and have lunch together," Killen explains.

"Generally most of the dishes are quite westernised - prawns, seafoods, chicken, beef - but there are always a couple of wildcards in there.

"I've been a bit more adventurous than Ivan - I think it has put him off a couple of his own meals watching me eat."

The former Celtic and Middlesbrough striker has tried chicken's feet, duck's tongue and pig's ears but was stumped by a soup.

"The most bizarre thing we have seen was a soup with a couple of pigeons in there. The whole pigeon - the head, the beak - I didn't even look long enough but it could have even had the feathers on, for all I know. We don't even know if it was meant to be in there. For all we know, they were flying around and just fell in. I have tried most things but I didn't go anywhere near that soup."

The duo plan to eventually take Mandarin lessons but for now are picking up as much as they can, with mixed results.

"We have got a driver but he doesn't speak English," says Killen.

"It is hand signals - you are shouting stuff at him and he is shouting back. We are trying to learn useful words but those words don't come handy when we are trying to tell our driver where to go and what to do.

"Our driver takes us out to dinner and we don't really have much of a say because we can't tell him what we want to eat. We end up making animal noises for what we want to eat."

Vicelich is slowly adapting to the humidity, the hottest he has ever played in, and the long trips to away games.

The temperature regularly hits 38C and getting to their latest match involved a five-hour domestic flight - "halfway back to Auckland," he jokes.

The 29-year-old Killen fielded post-World Cup offers from the Middle East and Europe before settling on China and sounds satisfied.

"Football-wise, I want to do as well as I can - but to learn a different culture and live in a different country is a great opportunity as well."

Shenzen Ruby FC was founded in 1994 and has had mixed success in the 16-team Chinese Super League. They finished runners-up in 2002 and were champions two years later but have not been higher than 11th in the past five seasons.

As well as Vicelich and Killen, the foreign recruits include a German, an Iraqi, a Serbian and the younger brother of ex-Arsenal and current Barcelona player Alexander Hleb.

The club have also employed their first foreign coach in Sinisa Gogic, who starred for Olympiakos in the Champions League and scored the winning goal for Cyprus over Spain.

At this early stage, Vicelich is satisfied with the roster and the standard of football.

"They all have very good techniques, [they are] fast on the ball and it seems to be a good league. I'm not too sure how a country like this doesn't qualify for the World Cup, having one billion people here."

After his midfield adventures in South Africa, Vicelich is back playing - a little reluctantly - as a central defender in a 4-3-3 formation.

The ex-NZFC star says it is down to the "magic of football" that he has ended up in China but admits to wondering what may have been if that 25m half volley against Italy had whistled the other side of the post.

"I think about it sometimes, don't worry."

After two years in the quiet Auckland suburb of Sandringham, Vicelich has been blown away by the scale of everything in Shenzen.

The first of China's special economic zones, it is reputedly the fastest-growing city in the world. Thirty years ago, it was a fishing village of 30,000 people. Now there is a population of 14 million.

The Kiwi duo are living in a hotel and Killen says their search for a flat has been a nightmare but they may have finally struck gold: "It's a little oasis plonked in the middle of this mad city. I haven't seen anywhere in England or Europe that is as good as this place."

Killen describes a grand complex with a concierge, swimming pools and Italian marble.