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Reader question: Please explain “sleeping giant”, as in “Chinese football is a sleeping giant.” My comments: China is a sleeping giant in many ways, but perhaps not in football. In football, China has always been a minnow. A dwarf, in other words, instead of a giant. A giant, on the other hand, is a big man. In folk lore, a giant is a being with human form but superhuman in size and strength. Strength is where Chinese football has been, still is, lacking. Anyways, to say someone is a sleeping giant is to suggest this someone is big and strong, in fact, much stronger than any ordinary person is. A sleeping giant, you see, is literally a giant that is deep in sleep. When he wakes up and does his thing, he will wreck havoc and show his power. That’s the idea. By the way, I once heard a South Korean friend say the same thing, along the same line – of Chinese football being in slumber. “When Team China wakes up,” he said, “it will shake the world.” “When it wakes up”, that is. That is a good point. Now, when exactly is that? Can anyone tell me? I mean, where Chinese football is concerned, that “when” sounds like forever. Oh, well, here are a few other examples of “sleeping giant” culled from the Internet: 1. Isoroku Yamamoto’s sleeping giant quotation is a saying attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto regarding the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan. | 
