Children practice football in a youth football training camp in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in September. Photo: CFP

 "You need to play more aggressive," Li Junwen, a 29-year-old primary school football teacher in Kunming, Yunnan Province, is busy coaching his 20 pupils during the winter holidays.

"My biggest dream is that my students can play in World Cup," Li said.

Many people blame academic pressure and lack of school soccer for China's terrible soccer team. All that may be about to change.

On January 27, China's Ministry of Education (MOE), together with five other central government departments, established a "school football leading group" to ensure that football thrives in the country's schools, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The leading group is tasked with encouraging campus football development through promulgating laws and policies, outlining annual plans, and reviewing rules and budgets for promoting the sport among the nation's students and youth.

Starting them young

Yuan Guiren, China's education minister, said on January 16 that football will be part of students' overall quality assessment, adding that schools will keep a record of students' football skills.

Football will also become a compulsory part of physical education classes, said Yuan.

The MOE also announced that it plans to select 20,000 primary and middle schools in which to promote football by 2017. It will also choose 30 counties to serve as trial areas for the development of school football.

Chosen schools must have dedicated football instructors, specialized classes, and have performed well in previous school football competitions. A nationwide selection process has already kicked off.

Beijing plans to select 200 schools for promoting football, with the first batch of candidate schools to be nominated before the end of February, a source close to the capital's school football development program from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education told the Global Times.

"There will be more training for football instructors in those selected schools," he said, adding that more detailed plans will be issued in the coming academic semester.

Schools will rent public football fields for students and pay for students to train in football clubs, he said.

Li said that his employer has also submitted an application. "We are confident we'll be chosen but not really sure about what benefits we'll get," Li said. "At least, we can expect the title will make us more attractive to prospective students."

"Recent school football programs focus more on educating students rather than identifying talent," Sun Baojie, a physical education expert and veteran referee from Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

In July, the MOE laid out plans to establish football tournaments in primary, junior and high schools as well as colleges. Enrollment policies will be relaxed so it will be easier for schools and colleges to recruit talented footballers, Xinhua said.

Football can be a "starting point" to reform the country's physical education system, the Beijing source said.

Comparing to other sports like basketball and volleyball, football requires fewer facilities and is easier to promote due to China's large number of football fans, he added. "If the school football program becomes successful, it could serve as a pattern to promote other sports."

Although Chinese men's team has failed to qualify for the World Cup for the past 12 years, the country is still football-mad. On July 14, more than 87 million Chinese football fans watched Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the World Cup Final.

China's three victories in this year's Asian Cup greatly boosted the country's confidence in the future of its football team.

President Xi Jinping is also a well known football fan, who has repeatedly voiced his support for the support's development in China.

According to the Guangzhou-based Soccer News on July 7, 2011, the then vice-president Xi said that he had "three dreams" for Chinese football: qualify for the World Cup, host the World Cup, and win the World Cup.

Wang Dengfeng, director of the Physical Education, Health and Art Department under the MOE, became vice chairman of the China Football Association in January 2014. It was the first time an education official was placed into Chinese football's managing authority, a demonstration of authorities' recognition that the growth of Chinese football must start with children, Nandu Daily reported in May.

Potential red cards

The central government has high hopes for its school football program, but many schools still experience problems with basics such as finding qualified football teachers.

Football teachers need to have a coaching certificate issued by football authorities and teaching certificates from education authorities.

You Songhui, general-secretary of Shanghai's scholastic football league, said that many local schools have hired retired football players or have phys-ed teachers who don't have coaching certificates training their students.

The country needs some 40,000 football teachers for all the schools that will be designated nationwide, but the current pace of training is too slow, the Beijing source said. The MOE also plans to train as many as 6,000 football teachers in 2015.

"Having proper football teachers is crucial for the future of the program, as improper training will not foster students' interests or skills, and might even put the schools in danger," Wen Xiaowei, a football official from Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports said.

Some parents also worry that football classes might impact their children's academic performance. "The authorities have to reduce the course load or make the college entrance examination less competitive. Otherwise, it's not fair to ask students who have no interest in becoming professional players to take time to play football in school," said Liu Yun, a Beijing-based mother of a 9-year-old boy.

Although applauding the central government's recent efforts to develop youth football, Li still has concerns about its sustainability. "If there's not enough supervision of the resources provided to schools, the program might not be effective," Li said.

An article published in the Beijing Morning Post in November pointed out that the program could become a "vanity project" for authorities or schools if supervision is lax.
Newspaper headline: Football dream