Fox in the Penalty Area

Regarding the turning point of Chinese football, there are two opinions in public opinion. One is that the failure that began in the top ten qualifiers of the 2001 World Cup in Asia originated from Wang Xiaojun's own goal.

Another theory holds that the turning point was in the game in 2005. Zhao Kangming was sent off just 14 minutes into the game, which officially opened the dark decade of Chinese football.

But even those who hold the second point of view have to admit that the failure of the top ten in 2001 was a huge blow to Chinese football. Even if the Chinese team reached the final of the Asian Cup in 2004, it was just a form of Just a flashback.

Perhaps before the "Dark Decade", the darkness had already struck, and the first shadow appeared after the 2001 game.

In 2001, the Chinese team was strong and strong, which gathered the most elite strength of China's professional football reform at that time. At the same time, the World Cup was held in Asia, co-hosted by two countries, and the Asian region suddenly lost two of its most powerful competitors.

At that time, the Chinese media and fans were optimistic, thinking that this time, the right time, the right place, and the right people, it was the turn of the Chinese team to participate in the World Cup finals.

The result was that such a team, which the people of the whole country placed high hopes on, failed again in the top ten. Missed out on what might have been the best chance to play in the World Cup finals.

Later, when people look back at the beginning, many people think that Chinese football was already dead at that time. The red card that Zhao Kangming received in the 14th minute in 2005 was just a coffin for Chinese football. Just the last nail.

Subsequently, Chinese football entered a dark period of nearly ten years of darkness.

The Football Association is corrupt, the officials are corrupt, they do nothing in their positions, and they do whatever it takes to make money;

The chief referee in black is no longer the court judge, and the order is maintained, but has become a veritable "black whistle";

The selection of the national team has become an auction, and the highest bidder wins, not the able one;

The head coach is just a dog of the Football Association, the most important thing is not the level of coaching but the degree of obedience;

The club was unable to make ends meet, burning money was unsustainable, many companies quit football one after another, and those who remained could only struggle. There are teams that change places for their home games every year, like duckweed without roots, living in no fixed place, wandering around. Both the attendance rate and ratings of China's football league plummeted. In the end, even the national TV stations were no longer willing to broadcast their own country's league, and no sponsors were willing to provide title sponsorship for a league with endless negative news;

Media reporters have abandoned their professional integrity, they are party members, and those who give more money will speak for whom. For the sake of naked interests, they will not hesitate to spread rumors, and use their pens to portray people they don't like into a heinous bastard in the media. China football sinners;

The public is impetuous and regards Chinese football as a spittoon to vent their negative emotions, scrambling to get attention by spitting on Chinese football, proving their wisdom, and further hitting the image of Chinese football to the bottom;

...

Like countless hands, it pushed Chinese football further into the abyss.

Under an avalanche, no snowflake is innocent.

This situation continued until 2014. The country finally couldn't bear the chaos of Chinese football. The upper echelon heard the voice of the people, so they resorted to thunderous means to declare war on the black, ugly and ugly phenomena in Chinese football.

The leaders of the Football Association should be arrested and punished. Those players, coaches, and even club management who used to be glamorous and glamorous on TV cameras are now in jail, wearing In prison uniform, he confessed in front of the TV camera with a haggard face.

After the high-level anti-black storm, the Football Association was almost overthrown and restarted.

A brand-new Football Association team was established, and at the national level, the barriers between various departments were also opened up.

In the past, football seemed to be just a matter of the General Administration and the Football Association, so although the Football Association had long put forward a plan for football to enter the campus and wanted to engage in campus football, it had little effect because the Football Association could not control the education department.

In everyone's opinion, the education department can allow students to add an additional football selection item in the junior high school physical education graduation examination, which is already giving the Football Association a lot of face. After all, the Football Association is almost the department with the worst public image in China. If the Football Association encounters any setbacks or suffers from any deflation, it will only attract everyone's ridicule and sarcasm, and absolutely no one will sympathize with it, let alone speak for them.

But this time, the high wall was broken through.

With the joint efforts of the Football Association and the education department, a brand new national football match for middle school students was organized.

In fact, there used to be national football games for middle school students, but on the one hand, there were few schools involved, and on the other hand, the influence was low and the popularity was not enough. Few people knew about it. It was more like a kind of self-entertainment in a small circle.

This kind of competition for middle school students is definitely not what the new Football Association wants.

Efforts are being made to promote the event through cooperation with the education sector. The provincial middle school student football matches that already exist in each province and the national competition will be opened up, so that the provincial middle school student competitions will become the qualifiers for the national competition. In the qualifier stage, provinces and municipalities are allowed to formulate a competition system according to their actual situation. It can be a single elimination system, a league only system, or a centralized competition system.

Finally, a place is determined to participate in the national competition in the spring of the following year.

At the same time, it also actively contacted various traditional media and network new media platforms to promote this new event.

From the fall semester of 2014 until now, five national competitions have been successfully held, and today is the sixth national competition.

It took five years of continuous promotion and publicity to make this event deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The effect is quite outstanding. Now among the group of middle school students, there is a high degree of attention to the national competition. Whether you like football or not, you know that our country holds a national middle school football championship every spring. The most powerful middle school football team in China. Many schools with a football tradition are proud to be able to win this national championship.

Some people even compare China's national competition with Japan's national competition.

Although there is no comparison between the two so far, they can be discussed together. This is a great improvement for the late-starting Chinese middle school football national championship.

Some people analyze why the Football Association is so keen on this middle school football championship. Training reserve talents for Chinese football is only one aspect. The more important reason may be to reshape the image of Chinese football.

Because the previous image of Chinese football was really stinky, a lot of jokes about Chinese football were born during that time, ridiculing and mocking Chinese football.

Compared with professional football, which has a more complicated situation and a more negative image in the past, campus football is much simpler, especially in middle school. Creating a sunny and positive campus football event will help improve the public's inherent perception of Chinese football.

This is not an overnight project. These alone may not be enough to change the negative perception of Chinese football in today's society, but think about these students who have participated in the national competition and are in the environment of this national competition. When they grow up and enter the society , When they become the mainstream of this society, how will they recall the National Middle School Football Championship that has become part of their youth?

Are they going to call those games where they shed tears and sweat worthless rubbish? Is it a collection of ugly match-fixing black whistle?

No, they themselves don't think so, and they will never allow others to insult the event they poured their youthful blood into.

So under the leadership of these people, will the overall image of Chinese football improve?

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Hu Lai withdrew from his memory. He recalled carefully in his mind some information about football in this country after he came to this world.

To a certain extent, the Chinese football in this time and space has many similarities with the Chinese football in the time and space he came from. It is so similar that he even had the illusion that "I have not actually time-traveled".

But obviously, there are still many differences, and in those familiar parts, the subsequent development trend is not the same.

Let’s not talk about the changes at the professional football level, let alone the different development paths of the league, just talk about the changes in campus football.

Before crossing, Hu Lai's goal was also to join the school team, but he didn't join the school team to participate in any national competition - he knew almost nothing about the national competition, and he didn't even think about it.

He just wanted to join the school team. As for what would happen after joining the school team, he didn't think so much. If you want to come here, you will play games with the surrounding schools from time to time, and it would be nice to be able to participate in the "Shizhang Cup" in the city.

But after coming to this time and space, joining the school team can participate in the national middle school football competition, how attractive it is!

Now, in the fifth year since the event was promoted, 128 middle schools in Andong Province, where Dongchuan City is located, have participated. This is because the organizing committee of the Anton Province intends to control participation Otherwise, there will be more participating schools, but too many will lead to a longer schedule, and too long a schedule will in turn weaken the enthusiasm of schools to participate.

After all, a school does not only have a football team, and learning is the main job of the students. It is necessary to balance the relationship between football and learning. We cannot only consider how many teams will play the game, and we cannot blindly expand the scale of the game. If this issue is not considered, then the school will be forced by the pressure of the parents of the students to give up participating in the football game-if the parents of the students find that playing football will affect their children's academic performance, then they will not care about their children. Youthful blood, what football dream, will definitely cut off the connection between their children and football without mercy or hesitation.

This is also a delicate balance formed after the running-in of the past five competitions.

It can also be seen from this that the education department and the sports department can make this event go further. Without the cooperation of the education department, the Football Association alone would not be able to move this behemoth.

In Anton Province, there are 128 schools participating, so the single-match elimination system is adopted. As for who will play at home and who will play away, an online lottery will be used to decide.

Dongchuan Middle School, where Hu Lai is located, was lucky enough to get the home lottery.

But in fact, the visiting team No. 5 Middle School was luckier. They were lucky enough to draw their opponents in the city, so they didn't have to cross cities to participate in the competition. Although the high-speed rail is now very developed, it will take no more than two hours to take the high-speed rail from Dongchuan City to any city in Andong Province, but the fatigue of the journey will still affect the team's combat effectiveness.

Because the game was played in this city, there was also a small cheerleading squad of thirty people who followed the No. 50 Middle School football team. They were dressed in neat attire and used uniform slogans and actions to cheer for the team.

Although their team is now 0:3 behind on the field, their shouts are still ringing.

Before the game, Hu Lai heard from Mao Xiao that No. 50 High School is not a strong football school, and their school team is very average. The best result was just reaching the third round in the Anton Cup—that is, the national competition qualifiers.

But this does not prevent them from participating in this event every year, even if it is a round trip, they will come again the next year.

For the high school seniors in the team, maybe losing this game means losing three years of dreams and hopes, but they are still running tirelessly on the court. Everyone is taking this fight seriously even though it might be their last game of the year...

Hu Lai, wearing the No. 14 jersey, was sitting on the bench beside the court. Although this game had nothing to do with him, just like the game in the physical education class, he could only be a bystander on the sidelines, but he But looked very fascinated.

In the past, he didn't know how much he envied Japanese high school students, envied their youth who sweated on the court, shed tears in the locker room, and cheered for their school team in the stands.

Even those heart-wrenching failures made him envious.

In contrast, the youth of Chinese students has been defined by those film and television dramas as boys and girls hysterical, aborting and fighting nonsense.

He sat motionless, staring at the court intently, greedily taking a panoramic view of the scenes on the court and in the stands, all of which made him dazzled and intoxicated.

What a brave new world it is!

※※※

PS, it’s not on the shelves yet, no matter how many PSs you write after the chapter, you don’t have to worry about making everyone pay more. I’ll continue to use this opportunity to talk to you about my thoughts on this chapter.

This chapter seems to be an introduction to the new world, similar to setting instructions, but I describe all this from the perspective of Hu Lai.

I hope you don't feel the water.

Because the things mentioned in this chapter are actually the reasons why I want to write an overhead football world:

I have written football novels for 17 years and have been a Chinese fan for nearly 30 years. I actually have a lot to say about football, especially Chinese football, and I have also had some assumptions that sound arrogant and ignorant of the heights of the sky and the earth.

I can post these words on Weibo, in Moments, and even on official accounts.

But as an online novel writer, I think writing these words into online novels is probably the most suitable way for me.

I mentioned my thinking about football and education in "Heart of Champions". During the 2018 World Cup, I was also invited by the publisher of "Heart of Champions" to write an article about the educational attributes of football. Put it in my official account.

In "Green Fields", some of my thoughts were expressed through Zhao Ju-what should I do for those who started to take the road of professional football when they were young, but didn't make it in the end? Who is responsible for their passing teens? Who is responsible for their future?

How many parents are willing to send their children to professional football to gamble on such an unclear future?

So can campus football become a solution to parents' concerns?

Now I am a married man, and my son is seven and a half years old, and he is in primary school. Last semester, my wife and I also went to a lot of places to learn about the football interest class for our children.

To be honest, my child has no talent, and I didn't expect him to take the path of professional football. But I still want to send him to learn how to play football. I just hope to make him fall in love with football and learn something from football. At worst, he can also exercise his body, so that he can get rid of the life of staying at home and reading homework every day. Save it a little bit.

I believe that many parents who send their children to participate in various football interest classes have this idea-they may not really hope that their children will become professional players in the future, they just want to find an opportunity to let their children play sports, and let them play sports. Being able to fall in love with football this way.

This is still on the premise that we do not have a systematic unified campus football league.

What if there is?

When my son was very young, I had a fantasy that after he went to school, he joined the school football team and played games with the team every week. I watched him play from the stands, cheered him on, and played well. It’s good to praise him, and I’ll talk to him on the way home if I don’t play well. If I lose the game, I will comfort him and encourage him.

Football-related memories will be a very important part of his growth. The campus football league will become a common memory of their generation, that is their youth.

And I am very pleased that the youth that I have not experienced can be realized in my children.

Unfortunately, the campus football environment in our country does not yet support my dream.

So I wrote it into the book, a world where I, the author, have the final say. I want to describe such a unified national competition, and I want to describe the football youth shared by such a group of teenagers, and the transition from campus to career. experience.

Parents in this world don't have to worry about their children giving up their studies and taking the single-plank bridge of professional football. If their children are really talented, they will naturally attract the interest of professional teams through events such as national competitions. It is up to the children and their parents to decide whether to go or not.

If the talent is average, or the ambition is not here, they can still enjoy the fun of football on campus without giving up their studies. They will continue to study, take the college entrance examination, and finally enter the university and embark on another life path.

Or participate in the same national college football league in college. If you perform well, you will also have the opportunity to enter professional football.

When they're adults, they'll be thankful for what they've been through on their high school football team, teaching them how to deal with setbacks and work as a team. Fight shoulder to shoulder with teammates, celebrate victories, and face defeat.

This will become a valuable asset in their lives.

And only by solving the worries of students and parents, football will revive in this populous country, and we will have a large football population.

Given the size of China's population, such a football population is huge, terrifyingly huge.

This huge football population will become the cornerstone and soil of the superstructure of football-this is the case in any football power.

Without enough football population, there will be no excellent football atmosphere and football level. Without a sufficient football population, there will be no strong national team, nor a thriving professional league.

But most importantly, without the football population, there would be no football sport, and football would become a river without a source and a tree without its roots.

For me, fabricating such a campus football environment is also my little suggestion, or idea, on how to improve the level of Chinese football.

I know it's a bit idealistic, but I'm just a football novelist, not the chairman of the Football Association, so how to make the ideal come true is not up to me, let me finish the dream first.

Just like I sighed from the perspective of Hu Lai-what a beautiful new world this is.

I hope that in reality, one day in the future, we can also have such a beautiful new world.

Thank you for listening to my nagging, let us continue to look forward to the future of Hu Lai in this new world!