{"id":699593,"date":"2026-05-28T07:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/699593\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T07:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:57:09","slug":"notorious-chinese-ref-shows-playful-side-as-rednote-signs-world-cup-tv-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/699593\/","title":{"rendered":"Notorious Chinese ref shows \u2018playful\u2019 side as RedNote signs World Cup TV deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Controversial Chinese football referee Ma Ning is not known for having a fun side, but that might all be about to change.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The 46-year-old, who is notorious for his strict handling of players that step out of line, has launched an account on one of the country\u2019s largest social media platforms days before he heads to take charge of games at the Fifa World Cup.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">And it\u2019s fair to say the image presented on the new RedNote account on Wednesday was decidedly different from the one fans expected.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">For his profile picture, Ma holds up a red card while staring directly into the camera, shot from a fisheye, high-angle perspective that many users described as \u201cplayful\u201d and \u201ccute\u201d.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThis profile picture does not look like a football referee,\u201d one user wrote, while another joked: \u201cWhy did I receive a red card as soon as I opened RedNote?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ma Ning is better known for his occasionally controversial performances on the pitch. Photo: Getty Images\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2f2e509f-569c-4d00-82f5-3bcd057e265b_6cfa6651.jpg\" title=\"Ma Ning is better known for his occasionally controversial performances on the pitch. Photo: Getty Images\"\/>Ma Ning is better known for his occasionally controversial performances on the pitch. Photo: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Ma\u2019s account gained more than 25,000 followers and over 6.7 million views on related topics within three hours of his first post on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Controversial Chinese football referee Ma Ning is not known for having a fun side, but that might all&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[301066,340803,340800,340802,64,63,15420,37958,512,4690,16135,596,340801,340804,97372,14640,234518,85,21417],"class_list":["post-699593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-afc-champions-league-elite","tag-ahmed-al-sharahili","tag-al-ittihad","tag-asian-football-confederation","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bundesliga","tag-cctv","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-football","tag-ma-ning","tag-migu","tag-rednote","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-sergio-conceicao","tag-sports","tag-weibo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}