According to the Yangcheng Evening News, the success of Meizhou football is inseparable from the long history of local football and the solid mass foundation.
The successful overtaking of Meizhou Hakka has brought the "hometown of football" with 148 years of football history back to people's vision with a high-light posture. According to the "Chronicle of Wuhua County", in 1873, german missionaries Bi An and Bian Dezhi founded the Chinese Academy in Wuhua Yuankeng, opened a football field in the mountain nest on the right side of the Middle School, taught students to play football, taught football as a physical education course for the first time, introduced modern football to China, and opened a precedent for Chinese mainland football. In November 2015, Wuhua County Yuankeng was recognized by the State General Administration of Sport as the birthplace of Chinese mainland modern football.
From Changbu Yuankeng to Hengpi Old Building, but only 50 kilometers, half a century later, the Hakka "four points gold" style classic building Lianqing Lou is once again famous for football - "to see the play to see Mei Lanfang, to watch the ball to see Li Huitang." Li Huitang, a Five-Man in Meizhou, has been galloping on the stadium for 25 years, participated in the Olympic Games twice, served as the captain of the Chinese football team and the Asian's highest position in FIFA, the vice president of FIFA, and was named the "World King" in 1976 together with Pele, Matthews, Stefano and Puskas.
The 1980s were the highlight of Meizhou football. At that time, there were national team coach Zeng Xuelin, national team captain Wang Huiliang and Chi Minghua, Cai Jinbiao, Yang Ning and other famous coaches and international footballers. In the Chinese national team that competed in the 1989 Fifa World Cup qualifier in Italy, Xie Yuxin, Guo Yijun, Wu Wenbing and Zhang Xiaowen were all from Xingning County, Meizhou City, and the "one county and four internationals" was a good story.
Qiu Jianyi, director of the Meizhou Football Sports Center, said that Meizhou's local football events are uninterrupted all year round, "Our official statistics in Meizhou have about 5,000 football games a year, covering the May Fourth Youth Cup, workers' cup, etc., and the Youth League Municipal Committee, the Municipal Working Committee, and the trade union will jointly sponsor the cup with the Sports Bureau." This is only officially recorded, while there are countless competitions organized by private organizations and social organizations. ”
Qiu Jianyi also introduced that Meizhou has 83 national campus football characteristic schools, 138 provincial campus football promotion schools, 286 municipal campus football characteristic schools, and 24 football traditional project schools above the municipal level. The number of students participating in football reached 250,000, accounting for about 40% of the total number of primary and secondary school students in the city.
(Nanling Weeping and Crying)
![Wuhua County, Meizhou, Guangdong, is the hometown of the world football king Li Huitang and the birthplace of Chinese football[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)