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CHINA launched its bid for football world domination yesterday, with the socialist state’s Cabinet putting out a 50-point plan for boosting the sport.
Medium term goals in the plan issued by the State Council include substantially increasing the number of young people playing football and seeing the women’s team return to the top of the rankings.
In the long term, China wants to bid to host the World Cup and improve its men’s team.
Footie-mad President Xi Jinping has spearheaded the pitch invasion, contrasting with past leaders’ greater interest in table tennis.
The document described football as having “a broad social impact, loved by the masses.”
As well as “improving the national physique, rich cultural life” and promoting the spirit of “patriotism and collectivism”
football can also help “realise significant dreams for economic, social and cultural development.”
The Communist Party-commissioned plan will see 50,000 schools offer football training by 2025 — a tenfold increase — and build two new major professional training centres, as well as more stadiums.
It also gives the China Football Association the power to independently decide its own staffing and financing, free of China’s sporting administrative body.
Authorities will also look at putting a cap on players’ salaries in order to increase competition between rich and poor teams and avoid financially destabilizing bidding wars.
The plan said research will also be done into further restricting the use of foreign players, only five of whom are currently permitted per team.
China’s men are currently ranked 83rd by Fifa, one rung below Honduras.
They’ve qualified for only one World Cup, in 2002, when they were eliminated in the group stage without scoring a goal and are thought to have dropped plans to go for the 2018 tournament to avoid the embarrassment of being knocked out in the first round of a home cup.
The team’s poor performance is blamed on a history of corruption, overly bureaucratic government supervision and a weak youth training system that has seen the numbers of registered youngsters playing the game fall year by year.
