Recently, the Ministry of Education released the key points of work in 2022 on its official website, of which "promoting the all-round development of students' physical and mental health" is one of the key points. In 2022, the Ministry of Education will implement the reform and development action plan for the integration of school sports and sports education, and hold the first China Youth Football League. This means that campus football will enter the main position of China's football reform.
Pulling back the clock to February 1 of this year, the night at the Mei Ting National Stadium is definitely a painful memory of Chinese football, a memory that is reluctant to look back and is repeatedly deepened after the Chinese women's football team has once again stood on the top of Asia after 16 years. After thinking about it, we have to repeatedly mention the youth training that is related to the fate of Chinese football, because the gap between the two goals and Vietnam is actually a huge gap in the youth training work of the two countries.
(Huang Bowen lamented the rapid progress of Vietnamese football)
Let's turn back the clock, when Vietnam won the runner-up of the U23 Asian Cup in 2018, Huang Bowen once lamented on social media: "How vietnam is so sneaky and so powerful". After that, in 2019, Vietnam defeated the Indonesian men's football team 3-0 in the final of the Southeast Asian Games, winning the Men's Football Championship of the Southeast Asian Games after 60 years, and breaking the monopoly of the Thai and Malaysian men's football teams in the event for 44 years. The fundamental reason why Vietnamese football can impress people in two years is the persistence of youth training behind the "ten years and one sword".
(2018 Suzuki Cup Southeast Asian Football Championship Final Second Leg, Vietnam 1-0 Malaysia)
In Vietnam, there are many clubs that cooperate with British professional football clubs in the field of youth training, such as jialai Huangying-Arsenal JMG Academy, which cooperated with Arsenal football clubs in 2007, and PVF Vietnam Football Development Fund team, which cooperated with Manchester United in 2008, which helped the development of Vietnamese youth football by learning from the successful youth training experience of British professional football clubs and established a complete league classification system. In 2010, Vietnam opened a total of U21, U19, U17, U15, U13 five national leagues, and in 2012 added the U11 league, a total of 6 age groups. Moreover, these youth leagues are inseparable from professional leagues. There are clear requirements for young players in the Vietnamese league: the echelon of the first-class team must participate in the national youth league organized by the Vietnam Football Association, otherwise they will be banned from participating in the professional league.
Following the trajectory of time, we can see that as early as 2007, Vietnamese football was ready for the rise.
In the match against Vietnam's New Year's Day, half of the starters came from Xu Genbao's Chongming Island, which was fortunate and sad. Fortunately, we still have a fertile land of talents, but the sad thing is that more than half of the youth training institutions all over the country are difficult to do. The development of domestic youth leagues has been stumbling, just a year before Vietnamese football won the U23 Asian Cup, that is, in 2017, the mainland officially launched the youth competition, that is, the well-known Youth Super League, the first year of the tournament a total of 87 teams participated, but only insisted on 3 years, 2020 and 2021 halfway abandoned the youth league stagnated again; although the education system has a competition system such as "District Governor's Cup - Mayor's Cup - Governor's Cup - National League", However, it has never been able to sort out the organization and connection of the event, which has created a barrier that is difficult to break in campus football and professional football.
The emergence of the first Chinese youth football league may be a good opportunity, through this event, we can establish a perfect system of "primary school league - junior high school league - high school league - university league", through several years or decades of efforts to make this event formal and comprehensive operation, then it is logical about the foundation of the tower, so that we can look forward to the tall buildings that belong to Chinese football.
The best example of this is the Japanese high school league. Since 1917, Japan's high school league has been held for 100 years, and many "school football" stars such as Keisuke Honda, Yuto Nagatomo, Shinji Okazaki, and Isamu Ōki have emerged. Corporate sponsorship, television broadcasting, professional venues, long-term accumulation and heritage have made the high school league a fertile ground for the growth of football youth talents.
Whenever Chinese football is at a loss on the professional field, each of us can find the crux of the problem - that is, youth training, but there is no way to take the right medicine after the symptoms, now, campus football has entered the main position of China's football reform, we finally see some hope, I have to persevere, not because there is hope to insist, but because of perseverance to see the real hope.