Thu, May 12, 2016 page19

• FEATURE: China’s soccer boom missing key ingredient

  • AFP, GUANGZHOU, China
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  When Kin Chai was a boy in 1990s China, his rural school had no soccer team. Or pitch. Or even a ball. Instead, the children kicked an empty plastic jug around in the street.

  “It was a small village, not that developed ... we tried to put together village competitions, but the school didn’t have the resources,” he said.

  Fast-forward 20 years and China is in the midst of a national soccer boom, investing billions of dollars in an effort to realize Chinese President Xi Jinping’s dreams of hosting, and one day winning, the World Cup.

  

  Children attend a soccer training session in the suburbs of Guangzhou, China, on Jan. 12.

  Photo: AFP

  China, long an avid consumer of foreign soccer, such as the English Premier League, is now attracting expensive talent to its domestic competition and has plans to build thousands of academies to create a new generation of players.

  However, it is finding there is one thing money cannot buy: a love of playing the game, the simple ingredient that many experts see as critical for creating elite performers.

  Kin is now one of a small group of people working to inspire that enthusiasm in Chinese children, who are often too busy studying to play sport.

  With a university degree in physical education, the 27-year-old coaches for Dreams Come True, a not-for-profit organization trying to build a national network of after-school soccer programs aimed at encouraging children’s passion for the sport.

  “We’re giving students a little training in their spare time,” Dreams Come True chairman Zhou Weihao said.

  The main goal of the program, based in the teeming southern metropolis of Guangzhou, is to keep children active and make them “useful to society,” he said.

  If they show talent, “then we give them more training,” he said.

  This relaxed approach is unusual for China, and contrasts sharply with the industrial-style efforts of real-estate behemoth Evergrande, the majority owner of Guangzhou Evergrande, the current Asian and Chinese champions.

  It has built a soccer academy in conjunction with Spanish giants Real Madrid, reputedly the biggest in the world, where more than 2,000 students train for hours every day in the hope of making it as professionals.

  The facility, which boasts a huge replica World Cup trophy, mirrors the country’s notoriously intensive sports development machine, which has helped turn China into an Olympic titan while its soccer teams lag far behind.

  However, “the methods that China has used to great effect to become dominant in other sports cannot be transferred to football,” Beijing-based sports analyst Mark Dreyer said.

  “Simply forcing kids to play against their will won’t solve anything,” he said, adding that a “total overhaul of its grassroots system” and a “proper footballing pyramid” were crucial.

  China’s soccer skills have long lagged behind other indicators of national power: FIFA ranks China a lowly 81st, their only World Cup appearance was in 2002 and in March, they needed a big dose of luck to reach the final round of qualifying for the 2018 tournament in Russia.

  The government’s top economic planning body last month outlined a development plan to make the world’s most populous nation a global soccer leader by 2050.

  Within the next four years, it said, China will have 20,000 soccer academies and 30 million elementary and middle school pupils playing the sport, among more than 50 million Chinese active in the game.

  However, specialists say China has cultural issues — including a high-pressure university entrance examination or gaokao — that will make it hard to grow a mass youth soccer craze.

  The educational system “leaves very little space or time for sports,” said Mary Gallagher, of the University of Michigan. “Will parents risk points on the gaokao for the chance to play soccer every day?”

  Chinese media editorials and articles have called for a “grassroots” revolution in the sport, but until now, there have been few green shoots.

  Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, now coaching Shanghai SIPG in the Chinese Super League, has complained that soccer participation is almost non-existent in the country.

  “That is a pity because young people — boys, girls — they play badminton, they play ping-pong, they play basketball,” he said in an interview last year.

  However, a mother watching her son show off his ball skills at a Dreams Come True session said the organization’s low-key approach had fed his passion for the game.

  “He doesn’t watch TV. He doesn’t read comics. All he thinks about is soccer,” she said. “Raising his level of play is his dream. It’s our dream.”

  She paused, then smiled: “It’s the Chinese dream.”
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