American Tom Byer leads Chinese soccer revolution
Tom Byer has already proved himself in Japan, where he is regarded as a superhero; now Beijing has tasked him with repeating that success on the mainland, starting with grass-roots development
Soccer purists look away now. China has hired an American to teach the very un-American game beautifully. What's more, Tom Byer has been head-hunted from arch rivals Japan.
Sounds improbable? Far from it. Byer is a former professional turned soccer coach guru known to millions of youngsters in his adopted home of Japan as "Tomsan". So successful have his grass-roots training programmes been in expanding the Japanese talent pool over the past 20 years - and ensuring Japan's national teams are regular World Cup shoo-ins - he has been hired by the Chinese government to do likewise for the mainland. Byer is tasked to drive forward the state-funded China School Football (CSF) programme, an initiative to construct youth development. He is constantly on the move, commuting across the East China Sea between his Tokyo home and Beijing, trying to teach China how to play the game - and play well.
"I have a government flow chart on my office wall showing the administrative set-up. It's impressive," says Byer. "For years, the Chinese Football Association [CFA] paid lip service to improving grass-roots training."
Video: Tom Byer: Saving China's soccer, one youth player at a time
But now top officials from the Ministry of Education and General Administration of Sport have been ordered by the Politburo to join forces. The CFA, long viewed by many as not fit for purpose, has been airbrushed out of the chart to show a streamlined power structure to service the needs of the CSF programmes operating in thousands of schools in scores of cities.
"There is no other country in the world that has a government policy like China's to develop grass-roots football and expand the talent pool," Byer enthuses. "Now the government really means it. They are as frustrated as the fans. How is it that China can fire a rocket to the moon and is the world's second biggest economy, yet it can't beat Singapore in a World Cup qualifier?" he says.