It’s one thing to criticize China’s national soccer team, which has an abysmal record. It’s another to take aim at its cheerleaders, the girls who jump up and down, waving pom-poms to cheer them on. But that’s what Nandu, a newspaper in south China, has done.

It filed a report saying while China’s football team is bad, it’s cheerleaders are equally as a bad. Photographs of the country’s football cheerleaders are always showing girls with distorted faces and their mouths agape, the newspaper wrote. “[Their appearance] prevents the public from looking at them further,” it wrote.

In contrast, the cheerleaders on the basketball court are always gorgeous, smiling, attractive and sexy, it said. So why do the ugly ducklings end up on the soccer pitch? The paper said because fans in football stadiums sit further away, they aren’t close enough to see the girls clearly. If the audience is going to have a hard time seeing their faces, why bother to find beautiful ones?

The second reason the newspaper gave is that football cheerleaders often perform outdoors, which means a gust of wind or inclement weather could cancel out their efforts at looking beautiful. This makes it harder to look good and perform well outdoors, the report said.

So what do you think? Is this characterization of Chinese football cheerleaders unfair? Here are some photos.

Photos: Nandu