Bundesliga boosts China's talents

Five years since launching a youth training program in China, Bundesliga club Schalke 04 has called for more patience and consistent efforts at the grassroots level to help realize the nation's ambition of becoming a world soccer powerhouse.

With about 100 Chinese children dribbling, passing and shooting in Royal Blue colors on a daily basis, the FC Schalke 04 Kunshan Academy in East China's Jiangsu province is modeled on the Knappenschmiede－the Gelsenkirchen-based club's renowned training complex, where star Germany internationals such as Manuel Neuer and Leroy Sane were nurtured.

Now with the Chinese academy up and running since 2016, Schalke is thinking long-term to help China develop its own world-class players in schools and professional clubs.

"You need this constant exchange over the years for a long period, and then you can expect to have success," Conrad Ziesch, head of Schalke's China office, told China Daily during a youth training clinic at the German Embassy School of Beijing on Monday.

"This is something I hope Chinese football can learn－that you always need a long-term development plan. It will never happen in just one or two years."

Having boosted its profile in China through annual preseason exhibition games from 2016-18, Schalke hopes to impact the sport's grassroots development through the Kunshan project by bringing club-licensed youth coaches here and combining German expertise with China's own system.

At the Kunshan academy, Chinese children, aged between 7 and 12, take 90-minute sessions, which are designed to be fun yet technically focused, and featuring cross-sports conditioning and interactive games, according to Tobias Lederer, head coach of the academy

"We try always to put this into a very attractive setting," said Lederer, who has been overseeing the project since November. "Fun is our priority at this age. We want to implement a love for the game to provide very motivating surroundings to put every practice into little games. So we can trigger the kids' intrinsic motivation that they want to become better."

With international travel restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Schalke has been running online workshops for Chinese coaches involved at the Kunshan academy, and will also resume an exchange program which sends promising Chinese talents to train at the club's home facility in Gelsenkirchen and watch live Bundesliga games at the team's 62,000-capacity Veltins-Arena.

Launched by the central government in 2015, China is rolling out an ambitious soccer reform plan aimed at developing the nation into a dominant power in Asia by 2030 and a leading global competitor two decades later through grassroots promotion at schools, professionalization of its domestic league and international exchange.

Now with European clubs such as Schalke offering help, China still needs to forge its own path forward, finding the best way to combine the Western and Chinese methods, according to Ziesch.

"I would always say you should not copy the system one to another, it won't work," he said.

"We are not the club who just comes to China and says, 'If you duplicate our system, then it will work.' It's not realistic.

"I think the main principle is always learning from each other. If you have a constant exchange of youth teams, coaches and staff members, then you can give them a certain expertise, and then try to see what elements they can use from the German system in China."