Is soccer entering school curriculum the solution for Chinese soccer?

On 26 Nov., The State Council held a conference about soccer in the Chinese school system. The meeting decided that soccer will be included in school curriculum as a mandatory course. This is certainly good for school’s soccer education. However, would school soccer really be the cure for the Chinese soccer sport? 

There are two concerns here. The first one is the assumed mandatory nature of the subject. The second one is a lack of proper soccer trainers. 

For the first concern, we make a comparison with the Japanese soccer education system. 

This school soccer concept is believed to be borrowed from Japan, where there is an enormous population of students playing soccer. Registered number of people for U18, U15 and U12 are over 740,000 in total, 90% of which are school students, according to Japan Football Association. There are also a large range of soccer games for schools. These two factors make the Japanese school soccer system large in scale. 

However, soccer is not a mandatory subject for students in Japanese primary and secondary schools. It is a selective subject like other sports such as swimming, baseball, and rugby. This is what differs from the envisioned Chinese soccer subject, and what caused uncertainties, because after all, interest is the best teacher and motivation. Perhaps students with an interest in the sport would lose their eagerness due to studying pressure. 

The other concern is that there is a lack of certified soccer trainers at present at a national level. Most Chinese schools do not have such teachers with soccer training qualifications; on the other hand, coaches outside the school system may not be likely to teach in schools because of the particular human resource system in Chinese schools. This would be a major disadvantage for soccer education implementation. 

At last, Chinese soccer’s development should not be solely dependent on the education system. Professional soccer clubs youth training should be utilized as a major strength. 

Note: this is not word-by-word translation from the original article.