At 3:30 p.m., from the east gate of the Yuanmingyuan along Zhongguancun North Street, you will see a bus full of students, children hurriedly changing their clothes, with a whistle, the vehicle along the riverside road, quickly driving to the green field by the Xiaojiahe Bridge.
These children are the students of the football team of the Ma John Sports Specialty Class (hereinafter referred to as "Ma Ban") of Tsinghua High School.
On the green field at the bus terminal, coach Kim Jin-hyung (Korean) of the Maban football team has set up the training ground. Around this green field, the words "50 years of work for the health of the motherland" are tightly welded on the barricade, sprinkled under the sunshine of the west, which is extremely eye-catching.
This is the slogan put forward by Tsinghua University in the 1950s, and it is also the mission of Maban of Tsinghua Affiliated High School, which was established in 1986.
At the moment, this mission is converging on a Korean and a group of Chinese children.
When "Ma John Class" meets football
Time back to 2015. After the Maban athletics team and basketball team have achieved certain results and sent away a number of professional athletes, principal Wang Dianjun has the idea of running a football team.
The lack of coaches is a difficult problem in front of them.
Wang Dianjun and Ma Jia Director Luo Jian inspected the situation of youth training across the country and set their sights on Jin Zhenheng, who was then working as the head coach of youth training at Jiangsu Kediyuan Club, when Jin Zhenhenggang led the team to win the U13 age group championship in the East China region of the Youth Super League.
After several inquiries, Luo Jian learned that Kim Jin-hyun, born in 1969, officially entered the South Korean national team as the main central defender in 1988 and represented the national team in the final of the Asian Cup that year; later, he withdrew from the national team due to injury and signed with Jeju United in the Korean Professional League in 1992, playing for 8 years. After retiring from the army, Kim Jin-hyung successively served as the head coach of youth training at clubs in Pohang and Jiangsu Keyuan in South Korea.
From a professional point of view, Kim Jin-hyung has national team experience, league experience, and youth training experience; from a cultural point of view, the physical quality and cultural foundation of Chinese and Korean people are the closest, and Wang Dianjun and Luo Jian feel that this is the person they are looking for.
After several turns, in the playground of Tsinghua High School, they met this football coach from a foreign country for the first time.
(Coach Kim Jin-hyung)
Luo Jian asked Kim Very directly - "From 3:10 to 6 o'clock, more than two hours a day to train, train top players, not enough time."
Kim Jin-hyung also replied to Luo Jian very directly: "Enough." ”
As soon as it hit it off, the football project of Ma Ban of Tsinghua Affiliated Middle School was set up like this.
Admissions has become another difficult problem in front of them.
According to Luo Jian, during the entire admissions selection process of the football team, the most asked question by parents was "What conditions do you give?" Even some parents directly say "do you give us money", and many parents who are willing to apply for the exam are mostly helpless choices as a stepping stone for further education. However, the basketball team and athletics team that belong to the same maban did not encounter this problem at all when recruiting students.
What Luo Jian can intuitively feel is that parents are more repulsive and utilitarian to their children's participation in football projects. But as a parent, Luo Jian can also understand the psychology of parents.
"It's not the fault of the parents, it's the problem that the whole football environment has not cultivated the soil." Even if parents are willing to start practicing football at the primary and secondary school stage, where do they go after practicing? China's football environment is not like basketball, there are college leagues (CUBA), there is a CBA can send talent out, give children a lifelong career trajectory; and now is indeed a 'golden dollar football' era, many players' salaries are much higher than their actual ability, which makes society more impetuous. ”
Even today, 5 years later, we can feel Luo Jian's regret in selecting talents during the interview. "There are a lot of things we can't do well and we can't do."
For example, in the experience of coach Kim Jin-hyung, many families in South Korea will let their children play football from an early age, which has nothing to do with utilitarian and career planning, but is just an interest. In the first and second grades of junior high school, according to the children's talents and potentials, some students begin to gradually divide, some students go to the path of club youth training, while some students continue to be in the soil of the school, but the two paths can be flexibly interconnected.
For example, when Korean schools select football students, family education concepts, parents' occupations, children's love for football, and even children's blood type will be taken into account.
However, the problem of poor environment and difficult enrollment in Chinese football training makes the current source of students in the Tsinghua Football Team mainly from Beijing, and it is impossible to select the best materials nationwide, not to mention that it is necessary to screen and assess the family background of the children during the selection, which is nothing less than a fantasy.
There is such a detail can be explored a little bit, the information available on the Internet shows that on December 28, 2018, Tsinghua Affiliated High School and Chinese football young players officially reached a signed cooperation, on the same day, 8 children of Chinese football young players officially became members of the Ma John class of Tsinghua Affiliated Middle School, in Tsinghua Annex for concentrated study and professional training.
This is considered an attempt at a new football education model, but it also highlights the difficulty of the Maban football team of Tsinghua High School in recruiting students to the society.
But with coaches and early players, this project can be tried first.
Chinese parents who "understand ball"
It turns out that this coach from a foreign country has indeed brought too many new things to the football team of Maban of Tsinghua High School.
From the perspective of selecting and employing people, Kim Jin-hyung is more often looking for the most suitable person for his team, rather than saying the best person. He will not stick to many data indicators when selecting, but will focus more on some indicators that cannot be quantified in actual combat.
In 2017, Kim Jin-hyung met Yang Fengyu. In the concept of the traditional coach, players who reuse aggressive frontcourt positions will pay great attention to examining the physical indicators of the player, but Kim Jin-hyung has seen through several actual combat games that Although Yang Fengyu is not tall or strong, he actually has a strong physical confrontation ability, the ball is very fast and the way of carrying the ball is also very aggressive. In Kim Jin-hyung's vision of the whole team, there is his place in the frontcourt, which will require him and reuse him.
However, this foreign country leads the team, and there is inevitably a situation of water and soil dissatisfaction.
Although both China and South Korea revere Confucian culture, there are still major differences in the culture and psychology of the two countries. Taking the more typical elder culture as an example, in Korea, there are very strict rules for the order of elders, and even to the extent that "as long as it is the order of the elders/elders/superiors, it is necessary not to question and not to resist unconditional obedience".
To take a few examples, in Korea, elders/seniors/superiors must speak honorifics, drink alcohol must turn their backs, elders/seniors/superiors must stand up and bow when they enter the door, and so on.
One difference kim senses as part of this culture is that Korean kids usually follow the coach's words, while Chinese kids more often have their own ideas. It is not said which of these two cultures is better, but this difference still brings no small challenge to Kim's training.
"To be honest, football is a sport that makes choices at every moment, makes the most correct and reasonable choices. But our players are still young and short, and many times they don't have the ability to make the best choice. In some games, as a coach, he will feel that the way the player handles the ball at that time has a better choice, and will remind him to correct him, but the player feels that his own way of handling is more reasonable. ”
There will also be children who make excuses for their position dereliction of duty, or even say that they shirk their responsibilities.
"For example, as a midfielder, his main task is to transport (organize tandem), but he always likes to carry the ball forward, no matter what he brings, it is dereliction of duty in his position, but he himself will say that no one will take the ball before he takes it."
Language and cultural barriers make it difficult to solve such problems. Whenever he mentions this, Kim Jin-hyung feels a headache.
"Football is a team sport, and many players come together to form a complete team, but when there is no collective sense of responsibility and shirking responsibility, it will destroy the unity of the team, which will also affect the final training and game results, as well as the future of these children."
Although these issues are all matters of principle in Kim Jin-hyung's mind, he will still intervene in a more gentle way than punishment.
"For the official game, I would simulate that scene after the game and tell him that there were so many good other options, but he made the wrong decision. If it is usual training, it will stop immediately when it is wrong, and immediately restore the scene just now. ”
"Do you think that has changed now?" In the face of this question, Kim Jin-hyung did not answer positively, but only sighed and said slowly, "Better than before, but this may be a problem that as a coach and team member to be solved all the time." ”
The conflict between this culture is also reflected in kim jin-hyung and the parents of the students.
"In South Korea, children have problems, parents are 'sorry, I didn't educate my children well', but many parents in China may feel that they are experts and interfere more in football training."
When speaking of this point, Luo Jian frequently nodded at the side: "There are also national team coaches who come over, but people will not say a word after watching our game, they know that we are more professional in youth training, let them give us various guidance, people will feel ashamed." But parents are not like this, they feel that they have watched a lot of games, they have heard a lot of commentary, they are experts. ”
"Blossoming" school football
Luo Jian told us that perhaps because he was embarrassed, Kim Jin-hyung did not confide in us too badly, but in fact, he has suffered a lot of criticism in the past five years of coaching in China.
Even with so many difficulties, Luo Jian said that the root of their ability to work together and recognize each other now is that they have a common dream. "Kim Jin-hyung once told us that his dream is to help Chinese school football win the top league in China, and making money is important to him, but he feels that his dream is more important."
Luo Jian repeatedly stressed, "We should be kind and respectful to others." ”
Because of the similar age, Luo Jian always called Kim Jin-hyung his brother, and he even wanted to learn Korean for this "younger brother", "but Korean honorifics, pingyu and so on are too much, I am so old, and now I can only say 'Anning Ha Sai Yo'." ”
In July 2021, with the issuance of the double reduction document and the implementation of the 3:30 p.m. policy, the training start time of the Maban football team was postponed from the original 3:10 to 3:30. This means that the time for students to get on the bus, go to the base, warm up, etc. is postponed backwards. This may seem like a 20-minute change, but it has had a crucial impact on the training of the football team.
"After training, in order to prevent colds, we also have to take a bath, which further compresses our actual training time." Kim Jin-hyung said.
At the end of the interview, we asked Kim What is the biggest training difficulty for the football team right now. He said he felt there was not enough time to train. Luo Jian also echoed twice that "time is not enough, time is not enough."
On December 30, 2021, the Affiliated Middle School of Tsinghua University held a year-end commendation summary meeting for campus football, and in this year, their football team won the 2021 Beijing Primary and Secondary School Football League (Junior High School Girls) Championship; the 2021 Haidian District Fourth School District Football League (High School Boys) Champion; the 2021 Haidian District Fourth School District Football League (Middle School Girls Group) Runner-up; and the 2021 Haidian District Fourth School District Football League (Junior High School Boys) Third Place 2021 Haidian District Primary and Secondary School Students Super Campus Football Super Cup (High School Boys) Runner-up; 2021 Haidian District Primary and Secondary School Students Super Campus Football Super Cup (High School Girls) Runner-up; 2021 Haidian District Primary and Secondary School Students Super Campus Football Super Cup (Junior High School Girls) Runner-up.
In the past five years, many players of Tsinghua High School have also signed contracts with the professional echelon of the Chinese Super League. Like Hou Lingyue, a graduate of the class of 2021, was signed by Shanghai SIPG; Shi Jiaoyue was signed by Shandong Luneng; xue Yuxiang was signed by Shanghai SIPG.
Some people have commented that Chinese campus football has blossomed.
Indeed it is. After all, there is such a group of people who are yearning for and committed to exploring the future of Chinese campus football. There's always hope, isn't there?