The FIFA world cup once again illustrated how much China loves football. Yet, the national team’s lack of ability is infamous.; are a new school and Xi Jinping about to change the football state of the nation?
China loves football. Despite the horrid time difference that saw a majority of matches being broadcast at 4am, the entire country was glued to the screen to see 16 teams, once again not including their own, compete for the cup. Four years ago, with the time difference between South Africa just as harsh, China accounted for the largest single-country audience, with an average of 17.5 million viewers per live match. Illicit soccer gambling has been called endemic; estimations place its worth at billions of Yuan.
And yet, China’s national football performance is wanting to put it politely. Occupying 103rd place in the Fifa World rankings and only ever qualifying for the world cup once, 12 years ago in 2002, Chinese football has a long way to go to be able to compete with European and South American grand masters.
A large part of that is the lack of internationalism amongst Chinese teams; while top European league clubs such as Arsenal have around five English players in their team, the rest composing star players from all over the world, in China the situation is reverse. Nanjing’s very own Jiangsu Sainty has only five foreign players and one foreign trainer on their team, while even the first Chinese club to win the AFC Champions League, Asia’s premier football league, Guangzhou Evergrande also employs only five foreign footballers; at least the Cantonese club sports an almost all-Italian team of trainers, suggesting that the presence of foreign football talent is indeed a recipe for moderate success.
While the country surely has the money, an issue that has discouraged international players from signing with Chinese clubs is undoubtedly the corruption in the field, which the administration is currently fighting hard to overcome. Former Chelsea star Didier Drogba stayed at Shanghai Shenhua for just one season; the club was reportedly found guilty of offering bribes to officials to secure a 4-1 victory against Shanxi Guoli. The worst display of such illicit behaviour saw a team trying to score an own goal minutes before the match was out in an attempt to reach the fixed score.
China, though, has been eager to prove its progress in the football anti-corruption campaign in the hope that this crackdown will provide the necessary standards to attract more foreign talent; 33 players and officials were banned in February 2013 as a result. In a move to further reconstitute the glitz and glamour of the sport in the Middle Kingdom, Beckham was announced as ambassador for Chinese football the previous year, right after the bribery scandal. His tour of the country was meant to inspire a young generation of talent, as with foreign footballers often not even lasting six months on Chinese territory, the country can only rely on homegrown players to progress the national standard.
This is where the Evergrande Football School comes into play. Located just outside of Guangzhou, the school looks like something out of a Harry Potter movie; Hogwarts for footies so to speak. With world-class sporting facilities including swimming pools, tennis courts and 42 full-sized football pitches, the school claims to be the world’s largest sporting academy. The billionaire owner of Guangzhou Evergrande football club, real estate tycoon Xu Jiayin, has spared no expenses in his endeavor to create a grassroots football movement and so a team of Real Madrid coaches is responsible for providing the 2,300 boarding school students with international standard training, shouting out their instructions in Spanish while their personal interpreters repeat them in Chinese.
The entire project cost a breath-taking ¥1.2 billion, and due to the claims of the backing of President Xi Jinping, whose love for football even became subject of a comic that went viral on the internet, the school’s representatives are promising it will be a grand success. “Chinese President Xi Jinping has three wishes,” the school’s headmaster, Liu Jiangnan told the BBC. “To qualify for, to host and to win the World Cup.”
Xi’s China Football Dream does not seem entirely unrealistic. With Qatar’s bid for the 2022 World Cup being drenched in bribery controversy, a revote seems possible and the Chinese web is filled with predictions that China will become the Ersatz host nation.
Now it all depends on whether or not the Evergrande Football School is enough to combat the serious problems the sport faces in China, which beyond corruption and lack of foreign talent include the pollution present in most Chinese cities, making outdoor sport downright dangerous, and more importantly the high-pressure education that leaves no time for extra-curricular activity. This lack of support for football talent is the most prevalent reason why the world’s most populous country is unable to find 11 people to make up a successful national team. Statistically, one great footballer will emerge out of every 200,000 players. Currently, China has anywhere between 7,000 and 50,000 children involved in football, according to the Chinese Football Association, which amounts to only one quarter of a world-class Chinese player.
While EFS might not be enough to win the World Cup within the next couple of years it could undoubtedly make at least some contribution in raising profile and quality of the nation’s football. Yet, with tuition fees of over ¥37,000 per year and very few scholarships available, the question is whether the school can attract enough talent in the first place; especially considering that the world’s top footballers such as Beckham and Messi stem from decidedly working class backgrounds. Due to the low local salaries in China it will be impossible for many parents to afford the high fees. Add to that the fact that many Chinese parents prefer their children to enter stable and “realistic” professions in the financial, business or medical sector, it seems a substantial shadow of doubt hangs over the success of the elite school, begging the question whether, in the end, Xi’s China Football Dream is merely an illusion.
