Govt works to boost soccer's profile in country

When Jiang Shuai, a former women's international soccer player, watched children of her junior club practicing on the turf at the Workers' Stadium as part of the sixth National Fitness Day on Aug 8, she never expected a star's visit and his warm words.

The tall, thin figure stepping up was Edwin van der Sar, former Dutch national captain and star goalkeeper of Manchester United, who was invited by a nationwide grassroots soccer tournament, Who's The King, as a guest to take part in the fitness-day promotion.

Thanks to the Who's The King campaign, which was launched on fitness day, amateur soccer players from across the country have a unified of platform to compete against each other while having access to legends like the Dutch star.

It's been the second major occasion that Van der Sar got involved with Chinese soccer after he chatted with President Xi Jinping about youth soccer in China during Xi's visit to the Netherlands in March.

In response to Xi's high expectations for Chinese soccer, the General Administration of Sport of China, the Ministry of Education and China Central Television jointly initiated the Who's The King tournament, which will for the first time involve thousands of amateur teams in China under one organization.

Sports Minister Liu Peng showed his soccer skills together with Cai Zhenhua, head of the Chinese Football Association, and Liu Peijun, deputy director of the Education Ministry's physical education, health and art department, to kick off the tournament on Aug 8.

"We will organize this year's mass fitness activities with the grassroots soccer tournament as a priority," Liu said.

By Aug 8, more than 5,000 amateur teams had signed up in 60 different cities to participate in the five-a-side tournament, which divides teams into three groups - children, teenagers and adults.

Teams will compete in regional preliminaries in a round-robin format to decide the winner of each of the eight competing areas. Eight regional winning teams will slug it out for the national championship in their age groups during Spring Festival next year.

"By organizing this kind of tournament, we get more people involved in playing soccer," said Cai, who was elected the CFA chief to the association's executive board in January. "China boasts the largest soccer fan group, but the number of people who regularly play soccer keeps declining.

"The event will inspire more soccer fans to actually start playing on turf, and will push public participation in the game," Cai said.