Will China usher in boom of football pitches?

China is planning to boost the construction of football facilities, and retool forsaken factories or street corners into football fields as part of a broader soccer reform to improve the country's play.

The government will spend more money building new soccer pitches nationwide, said Hao Fuqing, an official of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner.

The NDRC will also tap the private funding to promote the sport in the country, Hao said, adding that dilapidated factories, warehouses or street corners can be retooled into football fields.

Hao made the remarks at a meeting of soccer reform on Monday, in which the Chinese Football Association is decoupled from the government to enjoy more autonomy.

Soccer in China has been an age-old source of national embarrassment. The world's most populous country boasts millions of avid football fans, including President Xi Jinping. However, China qualified only once for the World Cup in 2002.

President Xi has repeatedly encouraged Chinese footballers to catch up with soccer powers. A top-level work group on deepening China's reforms, as led by Xi himself, in February approved plans to reform the sport.

The decoupling of the association from the government system is widely seen as a major step in the country's ambitious football reform, fueled by supportive measures including NDRC's "stimulus plan" for football pitches.

Just a week ago, the Ministry of Education (MOE) made soccer a compulsory part of the national curriculum. Earlier this year, MOE kicked up programs to open 20,000 soccer-themed schools by 2017.

Another interesting thing to note is China's differentiated attitudes toward some other sports. In a stark contrast to the heated football campaign, the government has been clamping down on golf courses for years. In late March, Chinese authorities shut down 66 "illegal" courses in a nationwide crackdown, the latest move since golf-related construction was banned in 2004.

Unlike football, which is usually tied to national pride, golf in China is generally seen as an "extravagant" sport that is often intertwined with corruption. Also, the construction and maintenance of golf courses is highly resource intensive for the country where the threat of resource scarcity is looming large.

Will those "illegal" golf courses be reconstructed into football pitches? That possibility might be worthy of attention.

Taken from Xinhua