The €8m boarding school on the tropical island of Hainan is part of a push for a great leap forwards for China’s not-so-beautiful game

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

China is set to open its own version of one of the world’s celebrated football academies as part of President Xi Jinping’s quest for footballing glory.



Xi has championed plans to revolutionise China’s notoriously weak national game with efforts afoot to create 50,000 football schools by 2025.

His ultimate goal is to transform China, whose national side currently ranks a dismal 86th in Fifa’s world rankings, below Armenia and Qatar, into a world-beating team capable of lifting the World Cup.

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The latest stage of that campaign will see a youth training centre modelled on La Masia – the legendary FC Barcelona academy responsible for players including Lionel Messi and Cesc Fàbregas – open its doors on the tropical island of Hainan in the South China Sea.

The China Daily described the $8.5m boarding school, the fruit of a partnership between the Spanish giant and a Hong Kong developer, as part of a push for a “great leap” forwards for China’s not-so-beautiful game. The academy will reportedly feature seven pitches and house 1,000 children aged 6 to 18.

Barcelona president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, told the Hainan Daily he hoped China’s answer to La Masia would boost its campaign to become “a football powerhouse” by spawning a new generation of Chinese superstars.

“More and more European players have come to play in the Chinese Super League, but by improving youth training, hopefully we can have more homegrown talent playing in the Super League and even European leagues,” Bartomeu was quoted as saying by the Chinese magazine Caixin.

“I’m sure we will see a graduate from our [Hainan] academy playing for Barcelona in the future.”



La Masia de Can Planes, Barcelona’s world-renowned academy, was conceived by former manager Johan Cruyff in the late 1970s and is today one of the world’s most revered youth training centres.



Known in English as “the farmhouse”, the school’s alumnae also include Gerard Pique and Andrés Iniesta. Six members of Spain’s 2010 World Cup-winning starting side earned their stripes at La Masia.

Cameron Wilson, the founder of a website about the Chinese game called Wild East Football, said top European clubs were now “tripping over themselves” to build youth academies in China, partly to gain a marketing foothold in the potentially gigantic market.

“But ultimately academies are judged on the players they produce and of course we won’t see that for a while.” he said.

Additional reporting by Wang Zhen