Nanjing to own over 800 football pitches by 2020

Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province is expected to grow its football industry into a 40-billion-yuan industry by 2020, according to "Nanjing Football Reform and Development Plan" released on January 8th.

The plan says that by 2020, there would be 150 national level youth football schools, 200 city-level campus football schools and 12 exemplary football schools for developing youth football talents reserves. At the same time, there would be at least 200 campus football teacher trainings each year.

The local government also aims to build representative professional football clubs of Nanjing and encourages government departments and organizations to organize amateur football clubs.

In addition to this, Nanjing is also looking to set up one or two football towns and to have over 800 football pitches, which means every 10,000 people can share 0.9 of a football pitch by 2020.

In November 2017, Nanjing was named host city for the IAAF 2020 World Indoor Championships, which will be the second IAAF mega-event to land in China following the 2015 IAAF World Championships in Beijing.

Source: Sohu

Proofread by William Logsdon