By Andrew Warshaw and Paul Nicholson
December 3 – China’s status as the world’s most potent growth market has led to a new accord between the Premier League and the game’s authorities in the vast Asian country – brokered by a delegation led by British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Under the deal, part of Britain’s general efforts to foster greater trade relations with China, the Premier League will work with the leading Chinese clubs to promote and develop the game – especially in the fields of youth and community football – whilst the CSL will provide marketing advice for boosting the Premier League profile in China.
The Premier League and British Council also announced plans to expand a coaching and referee training programme under the Chinese Ministry of Education named Premier Skills with the aim of reaching more than 1.2 million Chinese students by 2016.
Cameron’s 100-strong delegation, the largest British mission of its kind ever, includes Premier League chief Richard Scudamore.
“It’s great to kick off this visit to China with such a tangible example of how we are strengthening ties between our peoples and creating business opportunities for British companies along the way,” Cameron said in a statement on arrival in Beijing.
Ironically, David Cameron’s much trumpeted government initiative may be a little slow out of the starting blocks when it comes to establishing football links in China.
Liverpool Football Club, in October, announced the opening of a purpose-built Academy complex with Guilin Kingsborn, featuring full-size pitches, practice areas, classrooms, changing rooms, a gym, lecture theatre and medical facilities.
The Guilin International Football Academy, set in Guilin City and based in the Guangxi Zhuang region of southern China, will see coaches from Liverpool FC work on the project in China with the objective of recruiting and training local coaches as well as developing the standard of football within the region to benefit the game in China.
The jury is out on whether Cameron’s initiative is substantive (no investment figure has been announced by either side) or political hot air to woo a Chinese president who has recently found a love for football in a nation whose top club side, Guangzhou Evergrande, has just won the Asian Champions League in some style and with intense media focus internally.
Despite the China’s Olympic pedigree, men’s football has struggled in China at elite level – only one World Cup finals appearance – partly due to the fact that the country has little in the way of an organised grassroots programme. According to reports, seven years ago China had only 708,754 amateur and youth football players from a population of 1.3 billion.
High-profile players such as Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba chose the CSL, with its high salaries for foreign stars, to continue their careers but both of them moved on after just one season, partly to gain greater competition elsewhere.
Football in China has also been tainted by corruption. Earlier this year, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) sanctioned 58 people, including two association chiefs, after a three-year effort to clean up the game.
But according to reports, the East Asian market is worth £200m ($327m) to the Premier League each year in tv rights and merchandising; hence the effort to make greater inroads into China’s huge potential.
Read Insideworldfootball’s China columnist John Yan to find out what is really going on (http://www.insideworldfootball.com/john-yan/13398-john-yan-politicians-in-club-shirts and http://www.insideworldfootball.com/john-yan/13578-john-yan-the-most-valuable-acl-final-ever).
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