Catching 'em young is the goal

A new round of hand-wringing has begun over rising sports powerhouse China's failure to reach football's top event

How can China dominate various sports at the Olympic Games but not make it to the FIFA World Cup Finals?

With the ongoing 2014 Brazil World Cup igniting a global fever, the long-standing question intrigues the world again and has caused reflection in China on how to improve its game fundamentally to match its emerging world sports power status.

"The Chinese can definitely become strong (in any sport) as long as the government is committed to it. People already saw that in the Olympics. I wonder why it can't happen in football," Edgar Davids, a former Dutch national star, told China Daily during a recent youth promotion in Beijing.

What stumped Davids also has drawn attention worldwide after China proved its athletic prowess by sweeping up massive golden hauls at two recent Olympics, in Beijing 2008 and London 2012, but still flounders in football.

Since its first attempt in 1957, China has had 10 Cup-qualifying campaigns but only succeeded once, in 2002, when hosts Japan and South Korea qualified automatically and freed up two final spots in the region.

Despite being a perennial dominating force at the quadrennial Asian Games, China's national men's football squad only ranks 11th in Asia and lags far behind neighboring rivals Japan and South Korea in World Cup appearances.

Ledley King, a former England representative and Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur's ambassador, says it is hard to believe that the world's most populous country and fastest growing economy couldn't select 11 elite football players good enough for the World Cup.

"It's kind of odd that the country's awe-inspiring state-run sports training program, which produced a large amount of sports talent in events like table tennis, badminton and gymnastics, doesn't work out on the pitch," said King, who retired after the 2010 South Africa World Cup because of injury.

China's long absence at the world football championship contrasts starkly with the high expectations of fans and even top political leaders in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated three wishes in regard to football: that China reach the World Cup, that China host the Cup and, ultimately, that China win the coveted trophy. Xi expressed his wishes after a meeting with Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of South Korea's Democratic Party, who gave Xi a football with the autograph of South Korean football star Park Si-jung as a gift.

Xi also has shown great interest in football at many diplomatic events, which inspires fans about the game's future in China while pushing the local governing body of the sport to enact some changes.

"I have no idea how many times President Xi has mentioned football during his overseas trips. Chinese football should work really hard to improve so it won't let him down," Wang Wen, head of the Beijing Football Fan Club, says of Xi's concerns.

Lin Xiaohua, vice-president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), says improving the overall football level in China is the embodiment of the Chinese Dream in the sports field.

Pundits have attributed the failure at the elite level to a shrinking talent pool, resulting from the lack of youth involvement brought about by facility shortages and academic pressure.

"Only by engaging more teenagers at the grassroots level can Chinese football have a decent future. How to solidify the youth foundation will be the pivot of our work in the future," says Cai Zhenhua, the newly elected president of the CFA.

This year, in the first reshuffle of the CFA executive board in a decade, Cai was elected as the new head and now faces the daunting task of revitalising the sport in China.

According to the draft plan for long-term football development unveiled by the new CFA board, the number of teenager players should surpass 500,000 by 2017 and reach 1 million by 2022. All levels of national teams should improve their world rankings significantly and narrow the gap with Asian powers such as Japan and South Korea in 10 years.

In response, some influential figures have called on sports and education authorities to create a multilevel campus league linking schools and universities across the country.

Xu Jiayin, real estate tycoon and owner of the Asian champion club Guangzhou Evergrande, proposed that the Ministry of Education get more involved in youth football development, which currently is overseen by the CFA.

"The CFA should hand over responsibility to the Ministry of Education so that a real campus league for normal students - not just for registered junior players - can be established, covering thousands of primary and secondary schools across the country," Xu says during the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a yearly meeting of the nation's top advisory body, in March.

Under the current system, China's youth training structure relies on the reserve training systems of 16 top-league professional clubs under CFA, with talent rarely being drafted from campuses.

By comparison, Japan built a pyramid system in the 1990s, channelling primary and secondary school leagues to university leagues and then into professional divisions.

Thanks to the system, Japan now has more than 800,000 under-18 players registered, according to CFA figures, and its men's team has reached the World Cup's knockout stage twice, in 2002 and 2010.

In contrast, the number of Chinese student players has shrunk significantly due to the game's tarnished reputation following corruption scandals.

According to CFA Secretary General Zhang Jian, 190,000 student players are registered with local sports authorities, one-third of the number in 1995.

With the huge academic pressure that comes with China's exam-oriented education system, students have little time for enjoying the game of football.

Marcello Lippi, the renowned Italian coach who steered Evergrande to an Asian championship last year, says in a recent interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, an Italian newspaper, that he was shocked to see few Chinese teenagers playing football in schools despite the game's massive popularity in China.

Faced with that hard reality, the Ministry of Education has taken significant action.

Wang Dengfeng, director of the ministry's physical education, health and art department, says the ministry would urge every public school to build at least one football pitch for five-a-side play and hire professional youth football trainers by 2016.

It will also provide policy and financial support to set up a four-tier league system with the CFA that links primary schools to universities.

Football would be introduced as mandatory physical education for more than 5,000 primary and secondary schools nationwide, he adds. 

sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/20/2014 page24)