Chinese youth losing interest in football?
October 22nd, 2011 - 2:31 pm ICT by IANSNanchang (China), Oct 22 (IANS) Chinese soccer is on the decline because there are not enough youngsters taking up the game. And to make matters worse, the quality of play has deteriorated with incidents of violence, corruption and match-fixing.
According to the Chinese Football Association (CFA), the soccer population has reduced from 500,000 in 2000 to just 50,000 — a clear reason for the bad state of the national teams.
The sentiment was echoed by Xue Li, deputy director of the CFA.
“Soccer is a team sport. If the youngsters lose interest in it, it will become much harder to find the backup forces for the senior teams,” Xue said.
The 7th Chinese City Games, now being played here, has brought together hundreds of footballers aged under-20, but the enthusiasm for the game is missing.
“The quality of play is unsatisfactory which reflects the poor state of Chinese soccer. I think it’s mainly because the number of youngsters playing the sport is diminishing in the country, and the grassroots exodus is undermining the quality of our league and the national team,” an unnamed local coach told Xinhua on Friday.
A delegation, headed by deputy director of the State General Administration of Sports Cai Zhenghua, was sent Tuesday to Japan, to study how the neighbouring country has made such great progress in the field.
“How could Japan make stride in soccer? Because soccer in Japan gets as much importance as their national sport baseball and every university or school has teams in different age groups,” Xue said.
In 2009, China launched a soccer promoting programme in schools in 46 cities, but the initiative, according to Xue, failed because the schools showing little interest in promoting sports.
The lack of playing fields in the country’s dense urban areas is another reason for the lack of motivation to play soccer.
“There are playing fields in universities. But in middle and primary schools, there is no space for children to play football. If we don’t have enough fields, how can we make our children play the sport,” asked Jin Zhiyang, former head coach of the men’s national team.
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Tags: chinese city, chinese football, chinese soccer, chinese youth, city games, dense urban areas, deputy director, football association, footballers, general administration, lack of motivation, nanchang china, national sport, neighbouring country, soccer in japan, team sport, xinhua, xue li, youngsters, zhenghua