Government, Coaches, and Schools: How football is Growing in China
China has been known to be one of the greatest performers in the Olympics. However, its soccer performance hasn’t been as good in any international event, at times causing embarrassment to the nation. According to last year’s rankings, the Men's National Football Team in China was ranked 77th and the women’s team at 14th.
China is aiming to set up a domestic league which can compete with the Premier League by 2020, and participates in a World Cup by 2030. All of this was objectified by President Xi Jinping himself when he set his personal ambitions before becoming the President of China in 2012.
Within a few years, China has been able to establish a high-level government working group to popularize and facilitate the growth of football in the country. Football has been made compulsory in the national curriculum, and football-themed schools are also in the process of being incorporated.
With international stars invited with huge money transfers to promote the sport in China, the Chinese Super League has grabbed the attention of the world. The government has already started with the world’s largest soccer academy and has committed itself to set up 20,000 soccer training centers and 70,000 pitches in place by 2020.
For China, another industry that has got an opportunity to grow with the huge amount of funds being diverted to develop ‘football education’. There are international recruiters like Haida Interact International Company Ltd, involved in supplying schools with foreign education experts. They now have an opportunity to take advantage of these plans shared by the government. With more demand from schools to recruit football coaches and physical education trainers, recruiters have put emphasis on football-based programs. This is in parallel to high demand services like recruitment of foreign English teachers.
Beijing-based Kaiwen Academy has joined hands with football EPL club Manchester City to launch a football education experience. The focus is also on nurturing children from a very young age to bring about a drastic change in the international reputation of China as a football-playing nation. However, for a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, they will need major international exposure in the years to come.