This Day, That Year

Item from Aug 16, 1985, in China Daily: First goal — young hopefuls take a shot at the Beijing Children’s Soccer School, where all the students are younger than 6.

Although they qualified for the World Cup once in 2002, the national men’s soccer team has disappointed fans for decades.

But the country’s rise as a soccer power has just begun. China rolled out an ambitious plan to build 20,000 schools specializing in teaching the skills of soccer by 2020 to nurse talent for future success at the World Cup.

In 2014, education authorities announced that soccer would become a compulsory part of the national curriculum at schools.

Last year, the China Eyas Program was launched by the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation and the China Sports Foundation, which aims to bring a tailor-made preschool soccer project to 3,000 preschools nationwide on a trial basis by the end of this year.

The country plans to introduce the program at 27,000 kindergartens by 2020.

This has opened huge opportunities for foreign soccer clubs to cooperate with Chinese counterparts and investors in soccer, especially in youth training.

Earlier this year, German soccer club Bayern Munich unveiled plans to open a full-time soccer academy in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, to bring Bayern’s youth development knowledge and expertise to Chinese coaches and players.