Size matters in sport, apparently, and the internal competition is intense. China's sports system is divided into the 'small-balls management', which looks after table tennis and badminton, and the 'big-balls management', which runs the football, basketball and volleyball teams. While the small-balls teams frequently wins glory for the motherland, the so-called big-balls teams tend to be something of a let-down. But the football folk, for one, say that's all about to change, and a long-term Olympic war strategy has been drawn up in a bid to match the prowess of their small-ball cousins. While the Beijing games will officially lift off on the auspicious date of 8-8-08, the football action will actually start two days before that as the round-robin tournament needs longer than the Olympic's 16 days to be played off, with matches going on in Shanghai, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao and Tianjin, as well as in the capital. Professionals are allowed in the men's tournament, but since Atlanta in 1996 rules restrict teams to players under 23 years old with the exception of three overage players. Changes are in store though as Fifa's Sepp Blatter is leading a move to drop the exception rule for the Beijing Games, making it a strictly under-23 event. This of course will delight people like Zhu Guanghu, head coach of Chinese men's national soccer team. Many countries are only starting to think about assembling their young squads now for the upcoming qualifiers, but for the hosts, who have an automatic berth in the finals, it's a very different story. The plan for the '08 Star Team' was drawn up shortly after Beijing won the bid five years ago. The question was how was China, with its comparatively humble football origins, going to build a world-class under-23 team that would peak around the time of the games? With the backing of the central government, an ambitious plan was hatched. For phase one, which kicked off some three years ago, they identified about 30 young talented players in the 15-18 age bracket. These kids were exported to Germany to the town of Bad Kissingen where they spend most of the year training in a specialist football academy. Germany, like many other countries, is desperate to curry favour with China to get a little closer to that tantalising, if highly elusive, market of 1.3 billion potential consumers. One thing that Germany has that China craves is the ability to produce major tournament-winning football teams, so a bilateral deal was struck. Backed by the German football association and largely paid for by a plethora of eager German companies, these young players have been eating, breathing and sleeping football under the watchful eye of a group of top coaches led by Eckhard Krautzun. The second phase of the project rotates around another group of specially selected young players who are already playing professional football, mostly in the domestic Super League - the exception being Dong Fangzhou, who was signed by Manchester United but is currently on loan to Antwerp. These 30 players, all around 20 years of age, are also being nurtured in national team training camps and regularly entered into junior international tournaments. While this project helps build a young national team, it has led to clashes between the clubs and the China Football Association (CFA), however. Some of the training camps are held during the regular Super League season and the selected players are obliged to attend, which can decimate teams who have a lot of young players. Shandong Luneng, for instance, who were at one stage last year's title favourites, had eight players called up for one training camp. Needless to say, the plundered squad struggled to maintain consistent form. Bu the CFA leaves no room for doubt about where the priorities lie - it is Olympic glory for the nation all the way, with the clubs' concerns way down the agenda. Facing the prospect of unco-operative clubs they declared that any conflict between club and country would be resolved in the country's favour. Regulations state that players who refuse to join the national team camps would be banned from playing any CFA tournament for a year, and clubs that did not release requested players could be fined, have points deducted or even be demoted. For the two-year-old Super League it was just the latest in a string of body blows. The title sponsor had already walked away, trying to disassociate itself from the seemingly ubiquitous match-rigging and corruption scandals. And the disillusioned fans have been staying home in droves, leaving many clubs in deep financial trouble and struggling to pay their players, so the CFA initiative to put country before club has not sat well with the already beleaguered teams. In a later effort to appease them, the CFA did introduce some compensatory measures, such as allowing affected clubs more flexibility in registering foreign players, but ultimately the clubs know they will be forced to make big sacrifices until the games have come and gone. Next year the two Star Team squads will be merged to form the basis for the Olympic team. The CFA's boss Xie Yalong said that the huge efforts to build the team should at least ensure China a quarter-final slot, but there are big hopes that spurred on by a home crowd they can take their first medal in the beautiful game. If it doesn't happen, it won't be for the want of focused planning. The big balls team is pining for its day in the limelight.