North Korea’s lone academy hopes to produce their own Leo Messi
pyongyang — Undaunted by sanctions and hard realities on the pitch, North Korea’s lone football academy has set its sights high — producing players better than Lionel Messi, and teams that can dominate the world.
They are lofty goals for a country whose men’s side is currently ranked 126th, sandwiched between Armenia and Ethiopia and — more gallingly — way below regional rivals South Korea, Japan and China. But sporting success is a valuable propaganda tool and at the Pyongyang International Football School, which opened in 2013, coach Ri Yu-Il insists the sky’s the limit. “We are training our students to become super-talented players who can surpass the skills of people like Lionel Messi,” said Ri, referring to the Barcelona superstar with four Ballon D’Or titles to his name.
North Korea’s finest hour was way back in 1966, when — with Ri’s father, Ri Chang-Myung, in goal — they stunned mighty Italy 1-0 to reach the World Cup quarterfinals.
It was another 44 years before North Korea returned to the sport’s biggest stage at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where they lost all three of their group games.
In the circumstances, producing players of Messi’s standard is a stretch but 200 live-in students aged from nine to 15 — 40 percent of them girls — are doing their best at the Pyongyang academy.
Many of the training drills are familiar, but some activities are unusual — like the children’s tightly choreographed, formation ball-skills set to music which form part of the academy’s publicity material.
When they’re not playing on the artificial pitches, the students take lessons in classrooms adorned with pictures of North Korea’s late leaders. — AFP