Their heads soaked in sweat, a class of little boys practises Lionel
Messi-esque stepovers at a kindergarten tucked between residential tower
blocks in Shanghai.
Children football in Shanghai
They do not know it, but they are a tiny part of President Xi
Jinping's aggressive drive to make China a footballing superpower by
2050.Xi's ruling Communist Party is ploughing money into grassroots
football but it went a step further in March when it announced a pilot
scheme of football-focused kindergartens.
At Kangcheng Kindergarten in Shanghai, 23 of the best boys aged six
and seven play football twice a week in what is their final year before
primary school.At some other kindergartens in Shanghai they play from as
young as four.
Zhu Guanghu, president of the Shanghai Football Association, says
that when it comes to coaching, it is a case of the earlier, the better.
"I personally think three-year-old children can play football as
long as they can walk steadily and keep the ball at their feet," said
Zhu, as a coach armed with a whistle goes through ball drills at
Kangcheng Kindergarten."It's really important to lay the foundation for
them at an early age."
There are nearly 200 kindergartens offering football in Shanghai,
both boys and girls, he said, calling the sport "a particularly critical
education".The boys, wearing matching yellow T-shirts, spend most of
the time with a ball each.
Exercises focus on control and dribbling, and they are told to use
both feet.Towards the end of the hour-long practice, they do one drill
where they place the ball in front of them and, without touching it,
alternate between left- and right-foot stepovers.
It is the sort of manoeuvre that Messi does at pace to tie opposing
defenders in knots.Rather than the Camp Nou and a fanatical Barcelona
crowd of 100,000, the boys of Kangcheng Kindergarten are in the
playground and have statues of cartoon rabbits watching.
Wang Zhilin's father does not play football, but he has hopes for
his seven-year-old son."He wants me to be play for (Shanghai) SIPG,"
said Wang, referring to the Chinese Super League champions.
Perhaps one day little Wang will lift the World Cup for China.But it
would take a major improvement -- the men's side is ranked 74th by FIFA
and has reached the World Cup only once, in 2002.
The Wall