Reflections on Football Development
Beijing time on April 23, Zhang Lu in the soccer night interview in-depth analysis of Chinese soccer is difficult to make progress in the deeper reasons, he believes that the main problem does not lie in the youth training system, but the popularity of primary and secondary school students soccer.
"Chinese soccer can't do well, the problem is the lack of roots, without roots how do you cultivate a big tree in the sky. In fact, there is another layer under the youth training system, which is popularization. Youth training is selection, selecting the best seedlings from a large number of children and developing them into professional athletes, which is called youth training. Popularization, on the other hand, refers to allowing more children to participate in soccer. The two are completely different and we often confuse them. We in the soccer world are overly concerned about youth training with the aim of producing good players, and this kind of thinking is inherently problematic."
Zhang Lu further pointed out that during the fifteen years from 2000 to 2014, the average number of primary and secondary school students participating in soccer in China was only 5,000 per year. "While the world's soccer powerhouses, such as Germany and Brazil, have the largest number of children involved in soccer, France and the United Kingdom also have millions, Japan's primary and secondary school students who play soccer year-round also have one million, and even a small country such as the Netherlands has half a million. 5,000 people compared to half a million, the number of talents emerging is simply incomparable, and the reasoning is as simple as this. "
