Chinese football needs to build a firm foundation akin to that used in building a house, China's Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin said and the property tycoon also urged patience for the sport's long-term development in the country.
Wang, founder of China's largest real estate developer, returned to the world of Chinese football when it was at a low point, more than 10 years after he left a dynasty that he started with Dalian Wanda FC in China's former top Jia-A League in the 1990s.
As a senior football management veteran that has witnessed over 20 years of the game's ups and downs in China, the 62-year-old businessman said in an interview with Xinhua that Wanda's layout of its football industry, ranging from bolstering youth training to founding the "China Cup", aims to raise the level of Chinese football.
NATIONWIDE FOOTBALL REFORM BRINGS RESULTS
Since China rolled out an overall football reform plan in 2015, progress has been made in several areas, which the Wanda Group chairman says he recognizes.
"Chinese football is riding on a fresh rising tide after the boom in the 1990s," Wang said. "We can say that the game has developed better now than was the case years ago in China."
Wang attributed the progress to both favorable policies and sufficient investment.
"To put it simply, football is a money sport that requires a high capital input," he said. "But it also matters how the money is spent."
China's professional teams are also improving, said Wang, who cited Guangzhou Evergrande's AFC Champions League titles and several other Chinese Super League (CSL) squads' common appearances in the quarter- or semi-finals in recent years.
SOLIDIFY FOUNDATION FOR FOOTBALL
But in addition to the tangible results, Wang, whose story with football started back in 1993, also sees problems and challenges facing Chinese football.
Currently, the biggest problem is the performance of the national team, often seen as an indicator of a country's football strength, Wang said. "However the performance of the Chinese squad is not very satisfying."
The root cause, as Wang put it, is an unbalanced input between the CSL and the youth reserve. "As a result of a doubled or redoubled capital input, the CSL has flourished for the past four or five years, while in sharp contrast the number of youth playing football has not gone up significantly," he said.
The investment in the CSL has increased by at least five-fold, if not 10-fold, compared to that of five years ago, Wang estimated. "It is beyond our imagination that some homegrown players were transferred to other teams on a 100-million-yuan fee, making them among the world's top-priced footballers, but youth participation remains stagnant."
