2015-05-12

China Tries to Reform Football Too

If you have experience with China, you know that one of the most bitter topics is Chinese national soccer. You would think that with a nation of 1.3 billion people, competitiveness in any sport is only a matter of effort. However, history has shown China is usually limited to women's sports and individual events where perfection can be achieved through endless training sessions, such as diving. The government has tried to create athletes such as Yao Ming, by encouraging their male and female Olympians to marry and have children. The results have been limited though. One problem is that the state system of identifying young children with natural athletic ability is not the best sorting method for finding future athletes, as many of them do not blossom until well into puberty. Chinese society has very little outlet for a 17 year-old guy who suddenly becomes very good at basketball. See: Why the Chinese aren't good at basketball

Another problem in China was widespread corruption.

Little red card
China crisis: Soccer rocked by corruption scandals
China jails former football chiefs for corruption

In the past few years, large companies have purchased teams, spending money to improve the quality of play by importing foreign talent. The government's reform focus is also having an effect too, with a new plan to reform football down to school age children. The ambitious project is a microcosm of China's overall reform efforts under the Xi-Li administration.

The Economic Observer recently covered the topic in a story: Let Football Fly. 让足球飞
One strategy is the creation of football schools:
Two months ago, the State Council issued the "Chinese football reform plan" for the chaotic years of Chinese football specified course of action. Recently, the media has exposed a message that Chinese football reform leading group set up to promote Chinese football reform, established the "inter-ministerial joint conference system," and under the "Joint Meeting on Reform, the Office of Chinese football."

At the national top-level design process, grassroots football reform would have been tempted to put into practice rapidly impulse, increasing efforts to promote football. Qingdao City Board of Education led the country's first campus in April Football Association announced the formation of Qingdao, Qingdao, schools, universities join. 24 colleges and universities in Qingdao, the first batch of 203 primary and secondary schools football school has joined Features. Shenyang City Board of Education announced in early April 40 declaration of national characteristics of the school campus football list. Xiamen City Board of Education announced that it would use three years, so that 60% of schools into football characteristic school. Xinjiang also announced that from this year, the autonomous region will strive to create 300 national demonstration school campus football every year, by the end of 2017 strive to build 800-900 National Campus Football characteristics of the school, a substantial increase in population of football.
Several major companies are also talking about investing, following Evergrande and Alibaba's forays into the sport.
Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group has emphasized the group's ongoing fourth round of restructuring, the fledgling Chinese sports industry is their desire to share a piece of cake, and the occupation of the industry's high-end market through mergers and acquisitions; Letv company's music as the sport is financing, company valuation is not less than $ 450,000,000; Lehman photoelectric recently the announcement, intends to use its own funds invested in the main football-related business mobile Internet App technology companies; many football concepts in the technology industry and other listed company's share price It was quickly pushed up.

Qingdao City Finance has also been moving up, the 2015 municipal campus football special funding arrangements in place. One plan is to invest 30 million yuan in the city to build 100 football fields cage. Qingdao city districts also have their own investment plans, it is learned, Jiaozhou City plans to invest 10 million yuan, of which 500 million for the construction of a football field, Lee Chang plans to invest 300 million, the city of Shenyang and the city of North had been a large number of ongoing investment. 2014 Chengyang has invested more than 5 million of special funds for the campus football.

Qingdao has to create the Ministry of Education declared school football national experimental zone, is awaiting approval of the National Leading Group on campus football. Economic Observer news is obtained, the country will have a provincial Inner Mongolia, Qingdao and Xiamen, two municipal, 30 county-level experimental zone for the national school football, recent or approval.

Bohai Securities analyst Yao Lei of the Economic Observer newspaper said the reform of football as a national policy has been proposed, is having a profound significance, not high-level momentary preferences. Soccer economy is a quantitative change to qualitative change from. Mass football up, love and attention the sport of football population, the football industry will develop, football industry as part of the regional economy will be driven up. This is a gradual process. Now is the investment period. Space and future development of football industry prospects are very bright.

Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin April 21 described in detail how much a piece of cake, he says, China's sports industry is just emerging. The sports industry is the world. America's sports industry nearly $ 500 billion in 2014, China's sports and related industries only 300 billion yuan. Related industries for example clothing, Nike shoes are considered the sports industry, the statistics in this industry but may, when they plan for the garment industry, in short, together have $ 50 billion. If the Chinese sports industry can double 20 times over in a decade, then a small piece of cake will be enough for a business to eat.
Europe has an extensive farm system for developing youth talent. In the U.S., universities give out scholarships that can make it worthwhile for a student to focus on sports.

Things are improving now that they're using the strategy of throwing a ton of money at the problem:
Corruption scandals in the past, Chinese football prospers with new talent and big investment
Guangzhou's club experienced perhaps the biggest turnaround: relegated to China's second division in 2010 as punishment for alleged match-fixing, the team was purchased by big-spending real estate group Evergrande, signed Italy World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi and high-priced foreign players like Argentinian Dario Conca, and three years later became the first Chinese team to win the Asian Champions League trophy.

Last year, the team got another boost when Chinese online sales behemoth Alibaba purchased a 50 percent stake for $192 million (€179 million). It also announced it would set up football academies for young Chinese players in Spain and the Netherlands.

Now, every team in the league wants to replicate the Evergrande model. According to FIFA, during the recent winter transfer window, Chinese Super League clubs spent a record $85.5 million (€79.5 million) on foreign players — the third-highest total in the world and more than five times what they spent in 2013.

...Byer said there's a misconception that China lacks the sports fields to develop at the grassroots level, but he believes the facilities are actually better than what he sees in Japan. The problem is that China lacks a culture that encourages kids to start playing at a very young age.

"This isn't just to put China in the World Cup," he said. "It's basically an attempt to put sports, in general, back inside the school system."

Rowan Simons, head of China ClubFootball, an amateur soccer network in Beijing with 4,000 children, said the reform plan has the potential to be a major turning point if the government truly commits to the long-term process.

"It changes what has been a fatal short-termism, leaders being appointed and requiring results in the few years they'll be there, and discounting any plans that take longer than that," he said.

"Football reform has been tried many times in China, but nothing of this scale."
In terms of political return on investment, the government will see huge returns if it can deliver a competitive team in the next decade or two.

No comments:

Post a Comment