How difficult is it for Football Association President Song Kai in 2024: the scarcity of youth training and the strange legacy of the policy Men's and women's football continue to decline

Qin Yun/Captain Q (The pictures and screenshots in this article are from the official website of the Chinese Football Association)

Since the member congress on October 16 last year as the chairman of the Chinese Football Association, Song Kai has become the "king of golden sentences" in Chinese football, and various golden sentence slogans have been frequently released, trying to paint a beautiful blueprint for Chinese football.

Ideal plump, realistic skinny. The distance between the reality of Chinese football and Song Kai's golden slogan is the same as a somersault cloud of Sun Monkey. The cruel reality is waiting for Song Kai to break the situation with action in 2024.

1. Youth training

Golden sentence: In my bones, in the bones of the new team, I want to take youth training as the top priority. If Chinese football wants to take the Long March, it must do a good job in youth training.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: The Chinese Football Association only has 200,000 registered male and female youth players on its books.

Can't find 11 out of 1.4 billion people who play football? It's an easy question to ask, but it's not easy for football people to answer. In fact, where is Chinese football looking for 11 players from 1.4 billion people: the future men's and women's national football teams are actually looking for 11 players from 200,000 young registered players.

The 200,000 young players range in age from Under-12 to Under-18s, with just over two-thirds of the men's team and less than one-third of the women's team. If broken down by age group, even if it is divided into three age groups, the average male football group has only 50,000 registered junior players in each age group, and the women's football group has an average of only 15,000 registered junior players per age group.

With such a youth foundation, Chinese football wants to enter the ranks of "football powers", which is basically a fool's dream. According to a Go coach in Chengdu, there are more than 20,000 registered young chess players recognized by the Chinese Go Association in Chengdu, and the number of registered players in the country should be more than 5 million. In contrast, football is clearly a "weak" sport.

Song Kai frequently appeared on youth training occasions

While the number of registered young players in the Chinese Football Association is "scarce", the number of registered young players in campus football in the education system is very large, estimated to be more than 10 million. However, because there is no coordination and cooperation mechanism between the two sides, they are separated, and the youth training system of the Chinese Football Association cannot select materials from campus football. If Song Kai can break the closure of campus football to the selection of young players of the Chinese Football Association, the number of registered young players and the scope of selection may be greatly improved.

This only involves the number of registered young players, and other issues such as youth coaches, youth competition systems, youth training systems, etc. are not included. So far, the Chinese Football Association has not clarified the requirements for the qualifications of young people in the coach rating system, so there is a rocket speed for professional players like Li Tie to directly become professional coaches and even go straight to the head coach of the national team.

2. Decision-making

Slogan: In the future, Chinese football will definitely meet expectations if it comes out with policies in the future, and there must be no more strange policies.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: Although the U23 policy has been cancelled, the historical issues such as the recruitment adjustment fee and the Asian Cup city bidding fee have not been resolved.

The Chinese Football Association has introduced many strange policies in history, such as what header and goal in the era of planned economy counts, the second team of the country plays the league, and the suspension of relegation and relegation after professionalization, and the U23 policy. In recent years, the Asian Cup has hosted the "bid fee" and the adjustment fee for recruitment......

The 2023 Asian Cup is underway in Qatar, which was supposed to be hosted by China, but it was held in Qatar. The 2023 AFC Asian Cup China was originally planned to be held from June 16 to July 16, 2023 in 10 cities: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi'an, Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen and Suzhou. Among the ten competition areas of the 2023 China Asian Cup that have been determined, most cities have paid 15 million yuan in "bid fees".

The 2023 Asian Cup is the first time in 19 years that China has hosted the top Asian football competition. In the last 2004 Asian Cup, the AFC allocated US$3 million to the Chinese Organizing Committee. In the bidding and preparation of the project, none of the competition areas have paid the "application fee" or "undertaking fee".

In May 2022, the AFC announced that the 2023 Asian Cup would be relocated, and Qatar was later chosen to host it in early 2024. At the end of 2022, the Asian Cup China Organizing Committee finally notified the cities in the competition area that the remaining "bid fee" to be returned to each city is only 8 million. In that year, the cities in each competition area handed over 15 million, and the rest was more than half. At that time, some cities in the competition area proposed that they hoped that the organizing committee would issue legal financial information to assist the competition area in completing the process of returning the "application fee" to the financial account. Now, Du Zhaocai, who presided over the work of the Chinese Organizing Committee of the Asian Cup, is in prison, and there is still no explanation of the "bid fee" for the Asian Cup.

In addition, the Chinese Football Association also has an "inexplicable" huge amount of money on its books: the recruitment adjustment fee. The fee was introduced in 2017 and is said to be aimed at restricting clubs from "spending" on the recruitment of foreign players. During the Jinyuan football period, the Chinese Football Association collected more than one billion yuan in reinforcement adjustment fees, and only returned a part of Guangzhou Evergrande after the bursting of the Jinyuan bubble, and the rest of the more than one billion yuan remained in the account of the Chinese Football Association.

Although it promised not to introduce a strange policy, how to solve the "historical problems" of the strange policies in history is a practical problem that the new team of the Chinese Football Association led by Song Kai must solve.

The ban on the club's inter-provincial relocation and team naming was lifted

At the beginning of 2024, the Chinese Football Association issued a new policy on the work of the league. On January 3, the Chinese Football Association issued the "Regulations on the Change of Registered Member Associations and Equity Transfer of Men's Professional League Clubs of the Chinese Football Association (Trial)" and the "Regulations on the Management of the Names of Clubs and Teams of the Professional League of the Chinese Football Association (Trial)", which conditionally liberalized the relocation of teams and the sponsorship of teams belonging to professional clubs. The Chinese Football Association banned the inter-provincial transfer of clubs from October 2016, and implemented the use of gender-neutral names by clubs from pre-season registration in 2021, which has now been overturned.

3. National women's football team

Slogan: We must do a good job in the Olympic qualifiers.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: The salary arrears of the former head coach of the national women's football team, Bruno, has been delayed for a long time, and the women's football team has not participated in the Paris Olympics.

Following the World Cup and the Asian Games, the Chinese women's football team also suffered a failure in the Olympic preliminaries, which was the "three empty". For more than two years before the start of the 2026 Women's Asian Cup, the Chinese women's football team will not have a major tournament task.

Before the second stage of the women's football Asian preliminary round of the Paris Olympic Games held in Xiamen at the end of October last year, some media said that "Song Kai, the new chairman of the Chinese Football Association, also made it clear when communicating with some media on the 22nd, 'The Chinese women's football Olympic preliminaries must qualify!' This is equivalent to putting forward a hard indicator for the Chinese women's football team to participate in this competition." However, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency, when Song Kai talked about the men's and women's national football teams, he said about women's football: "We have recently strengthened the management of the Chinese women's football team, and overseas players have also been recalled." The Chinese women's football team is competitive in Asia, and we must do a good job in the Olympic qualifiers. As for what is called "playing well", whether the absence of the Olympic preliminaries is considered "playing well", only Chairman Song Kai himself knows.

The Paris Olympics said goodbye to the Chinese women's football team

Shui Qingxia, who created the miracle of winning the 2022 Asian Cup in India and winning the top two championships in Japan and South Korea, finally stepped down as the head coach of the national women's football team on November 20 last year. As for the future of the national women's football team, neither the Chinese Football Association nor Song Kai has shown their words. Later, in the warm-up match of the Chinese women's football team's visit to the United States, Wang Jun, the head coach of the women's national youth team, acted as the head coach.

At FIFA, the Chinese Football Association has a "historical legacy": Frenchman Bruno succeeded Hao Wei as the head coach of the national women's football team from September 2015 to October 2017, leading the team to a miraculous qualification from the Osaka Olympic preliminary round and reaching the quarterfinals of the women's football competition at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. However, after the Yongchuan Four Nations Tournament in October 2017, Bruno was inexplicably dismissed, and the head coach of the national women's football team was taken over by Icelander Siger. In March of the following year, the Frenchman was forced to leave China after his visa expired, and then filed an arbitration application with FIFA to demand compensation from the Chinese Football Association. After a triple trial by FIFA, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, the Chinese Football Association should pay Bruno and his assistant Eric a total of $1.6 million in compensation and interest by June 13 last year. In July last year, the Chinese Football Association gathered the media to threaten to launch "a challenge to the existing discourse system and ecology of international football", and even "will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights". So far, there is no news that the Chinese Football Association has fulfilled its compensation obligations.

The Chinese women's football team is burdened with the aura of history, but it is trekking in a difficult reality. The problems left over from history need to be solved, and the new development direction of the Chinese women's football team also needs to be clarified, and the Chinese Football Association needs to take ideas and take action in the new year.

4. National men's football team

Slogan: Although it is useless to be anxious about the affairs of the national team, we must build the national team well at the current level. If the team is well managed, it may be able to play at 120 per cent, but if it is not managed well, it can only play at 60 per cent.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: In the first round of the World Preliminary Tournament, the national team won the opening game away from Thailand, but in the Qatar Asian Cup, they did not score a goal in three games and were eliminated without a win. Changing the coach is the number one problem facing the national team now.

Before the Qatar Asian Cup, Song Kai once affirmed Jankovic's work as the head coach of the national team: "I think Jankovic is a good coach, and the coaching staff needs to sum up the lessons learned. We have to work harder. ”

However, the Chinese team in the Asian Cup only completed one lap of the group stage. With two draws and one loss in three games, the national team has created its worst record in the history of the Asian Cup. The praise of the national team has lost the confidence of the football world and society, Jankovic can not continue to stay, and the Chinese Football Association is busy changing the coach around the Spring Festival.

The men's national team is always a disappointment

Because on March 21 and March 26, the national team will play against Singapore in the third and fourth rounds of the round of 36 of the 2026 World Cup Asian preliminaries, leaving extremely limited time for the Chinese Football Association to change the coach. The captain learned that the new head coach of the national team should be determined before March 1 after the Spring Festival; the new coach should have a considerable understanding of Asian football and be able to get started quickly; and the two games against the Singapore team in late March are the assessment of the new coach.

led the team to sink in Qatar, and Jankovic made Song Kai and other leaders of the Chinese Football Association not have a good Spring Festival in 2024. I don't know if Song Kai will regret that he made his conclusions too early and too easy at that time.

After the Spring Festival, if the new coach of the national football team successfully passes the two new games, many problems around the men's national football team will be solved; if the results of the new Chinese and new games are not up to standard, and even let the national football team fall into passivity in the round of 36, Song Kai and the leadership of the Chinese Football Association will have to consider whether to change the coach again.

5. Personnel

Slogan: In China, the people who know the laws of football best are in this building, and there is no need to ask others.

Background: On October 25, 2023, the Chinese Football Association held a staff meeting, and Song Kai, as the new chairman of the association, met with all employees for the first time.

Reality: Except for individual departments, the main persons in charge of the internal departments of the Chinese Football Association are all appointed when Du Zhaocai and Chen Xuyuan presided over the work.

Since the beginning of 2010, when Wei Di brought Yu Hongchen and others into the Chinese Football Association, the highest governing body of national football has been in a state of "criminals by his side", so there is now a situation where the first and second leaders of the association and many middle-level cadres have been taken away for review and investigation. A simple count of the people who have "entered" and taken the initiative to confess is close to 40 people, accounting for about one-fifth of the total number of employees of the Chinese Football Association. The proportion of "problematic" personnel is really high.

So far, there have been as many as 14 people who have held or held substantive positions in the Chinese Football Association and have been taken away by the discipline inspection and supervision organs for review and investigation: Li Tie, Chen Yongliang, Liu Yi, Chen Xuyuan, Wang Xiaoping, Huang Song, Yu Hongchen, Dong Zheng, Du Zhaocai, Li Yuyi, Ma Chengquan, Tan Hai, Qi Jun, and Liu Jun. Among them, Yu Hongchen, Dong Zheng, Li Yuyi, and Ma Chengquan are all transferred, retired, or resigned, and are no longer serving in the Chinese Football Association. At the end of last month, Chen Xuyuan, Yu Hongchen, Chen Yongliang and others appeared in court for trial.

The Chinese Football Association has too many "living teaching materials"

Of the 14 people who were taken away for review and investigation, 9 of them were still serving as the Chinese Football Association when they were taken away, plus the 20 or 30 people who returned the stolen goods, there were about 30 or 40 people in total. According to the organizational structure of the Chinese Football Association reported by China Sports News at the beginning of the year, there are about 150 staff members of the Chinese Football Association. In August last year, the number of staff in the establishment of the Chinese Football Association should be 128 (excluding those who were taken away, as well as the employees of the two subsidiaries of Ford Bao and the Chinese Super League). Based on 150 people, the proportion of corrupt personnel in the Chinese Football Association is more than 20%, and the proportion of corrupt personnel is more than 23% based on 128 people.

In addition to the 14 middle- and high-level personnel who were taken away for review and investigation by the discipline inspection and supervision organs, the other personnel who confessed to the organization and returned the stolen goods are still waiting to be released. However, some tainted personnel who should have been waiting for the punishment were selected by the new leadership, and even took a step forward to hold important positions. And those who still have some ideals and abilities, who have no problems or no major problems, are kicked out of the cold bench by the opportunity.

At the meeting where he met with all the staff of the Chinese Football Association for the first time, Song Kai once said: "In China, the people who know the laws of football best are in this building, and there is no need to ask others." However, so far, I have not seen Song Kai promoting and reusing "the person who understands the laws of football best", but a few middle-level cadres with poor reputation have been adjusted to key departments. may be the definition of "the person who knows the laws of football best", Song Kai and everyone are not the same standard.

Regarding the changes in the institutions and personnel of the Chinese Football Association, it may not be until the conclusion of the trial of the former senior leaders of the Chinese Football Association such as Du Zhaocai, Chen Xuyuan, Yu Hongchen, and Li Yuyi that the Chinese Football Association can officially deal with the personnel currently pending.

6. Foreign affairs

Slogan: Combine internal skills with the help of external forces, with the help of external forces, there are going out, there are invitations to come in, and there are naturalization. In terms of staying abroad, all parties are currently summing up the lessons learned from the previous stay abroad for improvement. We should also note that golf and tennis have been in China for a relatively short period of time, but both have won the world championship in a relatively short period of time.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: For the first time in the history of the AFC 2023-2027 cycle, the Chinese Football Association will have no one to hold a position on the 29-member AFC Executive Committee.

In January 2023, Du Zhaocai, then vice chairman and secretary of the Party Committee of the Football Association, ran for the director of FIFA and was at the bottom with 18 votes, missing re-election. Subsequently, the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the 16 committees under the AFC were adjusted, and no one from the Chinese Football Association was elected.

In the AFC's 2023-2027 cycle, for the first time in history, the Chinese Football Association will have no one to hold a position on the 29-member AFC Executive Committee. That is to say, as one of the football associations with the largest population base among the 47 member associations under the AFC, when the AFC Executive Committee meets to make a decision, let alone make their own voices, the relevant people of Chinese football are not even qualified to attend the meeting, and this situation will continue for three years.

Song Kai and Infantino pose for a photo

After Song Kai joined the Chinese Football Association, he has participated in three consecutive foreign affairs activities. At the end of October last year, Song Kai went to Doha at the invitation of the AFC to attend the 2022 AFC Awards Ceremony. This is also the first time that Song Kai has visited foreign affairs activities in a new capacity after being elected as the new chairman of the Chinese Football Association. At that time, Song Kai had met with many international football figures such as AFC President Salman and FIFA Secretary-General Matthias. In late December last year, Song Kai went to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to attend the FIFA summit, met with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and took the opportunity to watch the 2023 Club World Cup final between Manchester City and Fluminense live. On January 11, Song Kai went to Doha, Qatar to participate in the opening ceremony of the 2023 Asian Cup held on the evening of the 12th local time, and will supervise the Chinese team to compete in the Qatar Asian Cup.

Song Kai's three foreign affairs activities can only be regarded as beginning to recognize people and break the ice in the field of foreign affairs, and it is too early to say that there are any achievements.

7. Ten years later

Golden sentence: We must continue to work hard to restore the health of Chinese football in 10 years.

Background: On October 22, 2023, Song Kai had a discussion with youth training and media representatives in Weifang, Shandong Province, which was his first public appearance as the chairman of the Football Association.

Reality: In September last year, in the final of the U15 East Asian Cup, the Chinese team defeated the Japanese team to win the championship. The men's U15 national team has high hopes.

On September 8, 2023, in the final of the 2023 East Asian Football Confederation U15 Football Championship, the Chinese U15 national training team played against the Japanese team. The two teams played to a 0:0 draw in 90 minutes, and finally the Chinese team defeated the Japanese team 4:2 in the penalty shootout to win the championship.

A month later, Song Kai went to Weifang, Shandong Province to watch the U15 final of the China Youth Championship, Song Kai said: "The U15 team won the East Asian Cup, and the U15 age group also gave us hope, the average age of the World Cup (players) is about 26 years old, and we must continue to work hard to restore Chinese football to health in 10 years." At that time, Song Kai also revealed that the Chinese Football Association was also discussing bidding for the World Youth Championships and the World Junior Championships, and at the same time, FIFA was also discussing the right to host the World Junior Championships with the Chinese Football Association.

I studied Europe and the United States back then, and now I am studying in Japan and South Korea

Song Kai's blueprint for Chinese football in ten years is first of all to give high hopes to the current U15 national team, and secondly, to make a "declaration of sailing" for the current team of the Chinese Football Association. He promised: "I will unite and lead the national football people, learn the lessons of the systematic corruption of the Chinese Football Association, continue to consolidate the achievements of education and rectification in the field of football, improve the party's leadership system and working mechanism, focus on the scientific, democratic and legal system of major decisions, build a loyal, clean and responsible cadre team, and create a clean and upright political ecology." ”

Song Kai even used his neighbors Japan and South Korea as a reference: "Chinese football has only lost in these 30 years. We are not stupid than Japan and South Korea, and if they can do a good job, we should also be able to do a good job. ”

Among the successive "top leaders" of the Chinese Football Association since the reform and opening up, Song Kai is not one of the few who talked about the blueprint "at the beginning of getting off". The other successive "heads" have either true or false and only spoke after a certain period of research. It's just that we don't know if Chinese football will look like ten years from now, as Song Kai is now portraying.

However, we know that in 2024, Chinese football urgently needs to break the game.