○ Sanhe village in Southwest China's Sichuan Province transformed itself into the province's premier soccer league
○ The club's success has helped drive local agriculture and attracted other entrepreneurs to open businesses there
○ China aims to open 20,000 soccer academies, with 30 million students playing the sport, by 2020
China has been gradually forming its own soccer culture over the past several years after Chinese President Xi Jinping, a soccer fan, pinned high hopes on the nation's soccer development.
For rural areas, developing soccer has not only helped raise the sport's overall competitive level, but also helped local villagers out of poverty.
Sanhe village in Southwest China's Sichuan Province is the latest successful showcase proving how soccer can turn a poor village into a wealthy region.
Sanhe became the biggest soccer village in Chengdu after it organized its first soccer league in 2015. Two years later, Sanhe organized a total of 248 soccer matches, watched by over 100,000 people, and now claims 1,078 registered soccer players, according to Chengdu Business Daily.
"Soccer has become our village's business card, and developing the sport has boosted rural tourism and driven sales of our agricultural products," Tan Jie, Party branch secretary of Sanhe village committee, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
Big ambitions
Sanhe village established its first amateur soccer team in 2013, when China first started vigorously promoting soccer in both rural and urban areas.
But as the very first farmers' FC (football club) registered in Chengdu, Sanhe's team at that time struggled to find a proper soccer field.
"We thought building a soccer field would cost less than 200,000 yuan ($30,553), but it turned out it required more than 400,000 yuan," said Ma Zhongyu, captain of the Sanhe soccer club, adding that the village eventually decided to crowd-source funds for the pitch.
At that time, Sanhe village had a bumpy dirt path as its only main road, and the average income of its villagers was below the average level of all 24 villages in the township. Its Party branch was even voted a "weak and lax" organization in 2012, and the village's overall assessment was the second-lowest among the 24 villages, Chengdu Business Daily reported.
In July of 2015, a grass soccer pitch equipped with lights, basic drainage and a simple audience stand was constructed in the village. The field was also rented out to players outside the village, who were charged 320 yuan per game, Ma said.
Sanhe village soon organized its first soccer league on August 15, 2015, with 20 qualifying teams. But in a poor village like Sanhe, players found no locker room and had to take care of everything themselves.
Even so, the league has made the village locally famous, as many soccer teams went to Sanhe for training and practice. The success of organizing its own league pushed the villagers' ambitions forward, and Sanhe soon realized the potential driving power of organizing its own youth training camp.
Chen Liwei, the coach for Sanhe's new youth camp, was hired by the village this August. He said that some of their young players will attend soccer clubs in Germany for further training. "We have reached a deal with a German company," Chen said.
The youth training team now has 60 team members. The two-hour session every Saturday costs those who live outside the village 200 yuan per month. "We hope that our youth training club will draw more city kids into Sanhe. Of course, with their parents," said Tan.
