China football gets Shaolin infusion to produce future players
DENGFENG (China): The young martial arts pupils cartwheeled across a pitch, before football coach Sun Dawei ordered one to deliver a kung fu kick to his stomach.
“You see I avoid the kick like this,” Dawei said, dodging out of harm’s way before grabbing his young charge’s leg and throwing him to the turf.
As tackling and defensive techniques, both would be short cuts to a red card. But the “Shaolin football training base” – set up last year near the home of China’s fighting monks – has ambitions to use traditional martial arts techniques to produce elite football players for Team Dragon.
China’s national team is struggling: the world’s most populous country ranks a lowly 84th according to FIFA and the latest setback to their fading hopes of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia was a 0-0 home draw this week with Qatar – which has only around 300,000 citizens.
But China is investing hugely in football training and has vowed to have 50 million school-age players by 2020, as the ruling Communist party eyes “football superpower” status by 2050.
The vast Tagou martial arts school, a few kilometres from the cradle of Chinese kungfu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan province, has 35,000 fee-paying boarders, who live in spartan conditions and are put through a rigorous training regime.
Some 1,500 of its students, both male and female, have signed up for its new football programme, centred on a pristine green astroturf football pitch where dozens of children play simultaneous five-a-side-games. — AFP