As the world goes football-mad for another summer, China’s embarrassment about the failings of its men’s football team are particularly acute. This was compounded by the imprisonment of several top officials for corruption. But the future of the beautiful game in the middle-kingdom is not all bleak. On Wednesday, Didier Drogba became the highest profile player ever to sign for a Chinese team. And the Brazilian Cleo recently had an impressive, if injury-ravaged, season for Guangzhou Evergrande, scoring 10 goals in 10 appearances.

Cleo had a distinct goal-celebration which involved pretending to use binoculars to stare into the distance. This has left a deep impression on at least one man. On the afternoon of June 19, a naked, middle-aged man climbed a telegraph pole in Shenzhen’s Bao’an District to imitate the pose. It took 3 hours for firefighters to talk him into climbing down, and an initial investigation has shown the man to be mentally ill. At 10 a.m. June 19, a reporter from Shenzhen Evening Post saw the naked man on a platform that was about half way up the telegraph pole on Fengtang Road in Fuyong Subdistrict.

There were two fire trucks at the scene, but the man did not acknowledge the firefighters’ calls to come down. He just lay there, then when the firefighters offered him food, he sat up and started speaking unintelligibly. By this time quite a large crowd had gathered, most of whom were very amused by what they saw. Then, when the man saw the photographer from the newspaper, he faced him and did the Cleo pose.

The man approached the telegraph pole shortly after 8 a.m. wearing just a pair of red underpants. After climbing the pole, he took them off and threw them down, according to a security guard who was nearby.

A firefighter told the newspaper that they could not climb the pole to rescue the man because their ladders were not designed for such a purpose, and whenever a firefighter approached the pole, the man would cower or climb even higher. The man is yet to be identified.

In 2009, a woman ran along a busy street in Foshan whilst stripping then continued running when she was naked, claiming she wanted to “purify.” In 2010, a woman streaked on and around a busy street in Shenzhen’s Longgang District, claiming that she was angry after having an argument with her boyfriend. Nobody could subdue her until police came, and some even filmed it.

Despite the country’s national team being below North Korea in the world rankings. The sport is still enthusiastically followed here. This week a 26 year-old man in Changsha died after staying up eleven nights in a row to watch the European Championship.