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BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese football needs to build a firm foundation akin to that used in building a house, China's Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin said and the property tycoon also urged patience for the sport's long-term development in the country.
Wang, founder of China's largest real estate developer, returned to the world of Chinese football when it was at a low point, more than 10 years after he left a dynasty that he started with Dalian Wanda FC in China's former top Jia-A League in the 1990s.
As a senior football management veteran that has witnessed over 20 years of the game's ups and downs in China, the 62-year-old businessman said in an interview with Xinhua that Wanda's layout of its football industry, ranging from bolstering youth training to founding the "China Cup", aims to raise the level of Chinese football.
NATIONWIDE FOOTBALL REFORM BRINGS RESULTS
Since China rolled out an overall football reform plan in 2015, progress has been made in several areas, which the Wanda Group chairman says he recognizes.
"Chinese football is riding on a fresh rising tide after the boom in the 1990s," Wang said. "We can say that the game has developed better now than was the case years ago in China."
Wang attributed the progress to both favorable policies and sufficient investment.
"To put it simply, football is a money sport that requires a high capital input," he said. "But it also matters how the money is spent."
China's professional teams are also improving, said Wang, who cited Guangzhou Evergrande's AFC Champions League titles and several other Chinese Super League (CSL) squads' common appearances in the quarter- or semi-finals in recent years.
SOLIDIFY FOUNDATION FOR FOOTBALL
But in addition to the tangible results, Wang, whose story with football started back in 1993, also sees problems and challenges facing Chinese football.
Currently, the biggest problem is the performance of the national team, often seen as an indicator of a country's football strength, Wang said. "However the performance of the Chinese squad is not very satisfying."
The root cause, as Wang put it, is an unbalanced input between the CSL and the youth reserve. "As a result of a doubled or redoubled capital input, the CSL has flourished for the past four or five years, while in sharp contrast the number of youth playing football has not gone up significantly," he said.
The investment in the CSL has increased by at least five-fold, if not 10-fold, compared to that of five years ago, Wang estimated. "It is beyond our imagination that some homegrown players were transferred to other teams on a 100-million-yuan fee, making them among the world's top-priced footballers, but youth participation remains stagnant."
He suggests that Chinese football build a foundation the way a house is built by focusing on youth football development, and running leagues in an industrialized way so as to create more opportunities for youth talents to pursue a professional career.
However, he says the development of youth football cannot be achieved overnight. "It is unlikely to see results in just three to five years," Wang said. "But it is never too late if concrete actions are taken to develop sports facilities, promote youth participation, and organize youth games."
As long as China has over a million youth players, the Chinese national team will have a chance to become a top Asian squad, he predicted.
WANDA'S AMBITIONS
The first "China Cup" International Football Championship was hosted in Nanning, the capital of China's Guangxi Autonomous Region in early 2017, featuring Chile, Croatia, Iceland and the hosts. The Wanda-founded annual event is an officially-recognized FIFA tournament whose results count toward the body's world ranking.
Wanda says it will communicate with FIFA to put the future games on international match days so as to increase the quality of the match-ups, Wang revealed. "The tournament is a good opportunity for the Chinese national team to learn from playing against high-quality opponents."
It has been six years since Wanda launched its "rising stars" youth project in 2011. The first batch of youth players will be 18 years old by the year-end. But Wang said it is still early to put them in China's reserve for future World Cup qualifiers as "youth training takes time."
Wanda has spent 100 million yuan (around 14.5 million U.S. dollars) annually for six years in a row for a combined 180 youth footballers to learn, train, and live in Spain. Wang estimated there would be at least two of them capable of playing for China's second-tier sides in the future.
If the youth project continues for another 10 years, it stands to produce young promising players capable of moving to the European leagues, some of whom may even qualify for the Chinese national team, Wang said. "In terms of fostering football players, we have to be patient and wait for up to 10 years before results can be seen."
He also admitted that Wanda's approach is tentative. "You have to try it if you want know whether a measure works or not," Wang said.
But the fundamental thing is that domestic youth training and participation should not fall behind, Wang pointed out. "After all, there is no football power in the world that relies on other countries to foster and train its own youth talents."
