Gaffer’s Banter

China Football Population Facing Extinction

Source: 中国足球人口濒临灭绝 练举重都没人练足球

Chinese Football Schools earn a living by 2 means:

1) Winning matches within their own league and age groups

2) Providing talents to first tier clubs

With little regulation in tact and hardly any monitoring, many of these schools would lie about the ages of these kids during registration.  Some suggest this is a wide spread phenomenon during the boom era of Chinese Football ( 1994-2000).  During this period, there were about 30 football schools in Chengdu, not many survived to now.  The reason would seem to be because of the whole football environment turning down, but really it is to do with the phenomenon above.  Many of the premier league teams have players from that era.  Instead of being in the prime as stated in their registration, they are instead close to retirement, if not already into retirement age.   Many young talents are often over look as a consequence and the whole youth system is being compromise as a consequence.  As China awakens to be a member of the international community, Chinese Football is slowly going into a dark age or disappearing into the dark hole altogether.  Ever increasingly hard to compete with the NBA for youth attention.

Youth registered under the Chinese FA Youth Division: 13,524 (from 497 clubs in 56 FA sanctioned schools)

300 Million youths in China.  Of course there are many youths who plays football out there, but they will not eventually go into the system and becoming professionals.

For a province to have a national team, start with 100 properly trained U13 footballers.  Roughly 30-40 will make it to U16. The national team will mostly be comprise of only 20 or so.  And of out these 20 footballers, 2-3 will make it Pro, if they are lucky.  That is to say if they have the necessary connections.

It is estimated that the expenses for a family to groom a young footballer from the age of 10-18 is roughly 250k-300kRMB.  That is not a small sum for most families in China.  When the future is so bleak for Chinese Football, not families are going to risk investing this kind of sum.