We give China £3m for football... as they offer our stars £30m deals

CHINA is being handed £3million of British taxpayers’ money in an ‘utterly bonkers’ deal to promote football – at the same time as it is offering Premier League stars up to £30million-a-year to move there.

Ministers last night said Britain remained committed to sending China the money to bolster the sport at grassroots level, despite having no idea if the programme is effective.

But MPs said the UK should now get its cash back in light of the huge sums being spent in China to pay top footballers’ wages.

The £3million would be enough to provide meals on wheels, which cost around £3.80 each, for 800,000 elderly people in the UK at a time when social care is in crisis.

Chelsea striker Diego Costa has been linked to a salary offer from a Chinese club worth £30 million a year – or almost £600,000 a week – which is ten times what China receives from the UK.

It comes after Carlos Tevez became the sport’s highest paid player, with the striker reportedly earning around £615,000 per week on a two-year contract with Shanghai Shenhua.

Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Junior recently joined their local rivals Shanghai SIPG from Chelsea in a deal believed to be worth £52million, on a pay deal of £400,000 a week.

Details of the handout to China were uncovered by the Liberal Democrats, whose spokesman Greg Mulholland said: ‘Before Christmas Oscar left Chelsea for £52million to join a Chinese team and Cristiano Ronaldo turned down a 300 million euro [£260 million] move there too – and yet we are forking out millions to help their football.

‘It’s utterly bonkers. China have more billionaires than anywhere in the world bar the USA. If they want to improve their grassroots game, they can pay for it.’

The cash is being channelled through the Foreign Office, which admits not knowing if the scheme has any value. Alok Sharma, parliamentary under- secretary at the department, said: ‘As this programme is in its early stages, no assessment has yet been made, but its impact will be evaluated during and after exe- cution to ensure impact and value for money. The British Council manages the allocation of our funding for grassroots football in China, which aims to position the UK as China’s priority partner for sport.’

The deal was first announced by George Osborne in 2015 during a trip to China designed to forge new economic ties. He said the cash would fund a Premier League scheme to train a new generation of football stars in China.

The then-chancellor said: ‘Grassroots football plays an instrumental role in UK life and it is brilliant to be able to spread that to China. ‘This fantastic scheme which will bring new opportunities to young people across China will also help bring increased awareness and investment into the UK football sector.’

But Ukip MP Douglas Carswell said at the time: ‘Given that the Chinese government has hundreds of billions of dollars of cash reserves and George Osborne’s government is skint, it’s a little bit odd that we are paying £3million as a gift to the Chinese government to train football coaches. Perhaps this is a very expensive photo opportunity.’