New school strategy to realise China’s dream of becoming global soccer superpower

Mainland schools will offer more soccer classes and authorities will build more specialist training centres as part of the country’s bid to be at the top level of the global game by 2050, an education official said yesterday.

Wang Dengfeng, deputy chairman of the China Football Association and head of sports education policy at the Ministry of Education, announced the commitments a day after Beijing laid out a blueprint to have 50 million players of the sport by 2020, of which 30 million would be primary and high school pupils.

The ministry’s commitments are part of plans to realise President Xi Jinping’s ambitions for Chinese soccer greatness.

By 2030, its men’s team is expected to be in Asia’s top echelon and its women’s team also return to being among “one of the world’s strongest”.

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State-run Xinhua quoted Wang as saying that many players would come from the 20,000 soccer schools that would be up and running by 2020.

In all, the schools would produce 20 million players of the game, with another 10 million learning the sport in mainstream schools, he said.