China in their hands

By Manfred Christoph

The newly-opened German-Chinese Football Academy (DCFA) in the Bavarian town of Bad Kissingen is looking to help China to win an Olympic footballing medal on home soil in 2008.

Joint effort
A collaboration between the German Football Association (DFB) and the Football Association of The People's Republic of China (CFA), the training centre is aiming to give Chinese players the skills to compete for medals at the Olympics and make up for their failure to reach the finals of the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals.

European base
The unveiling of the project, which will run for two years and cost €2-3m per year, has created enormous excitement in football-mad China. Bad Kissingen is now expected to be home to the Chinese side that will compete in the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship in the Netherlands.

Local funding
The centre, which is being funded by the DFB, the Bavarian government and a range of other commercial sponsors, was devised in September 2004 when a German delegation, including DFB president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder and German Football Legue (DFL) president Werner Hackmann visited China.

Cooperation programmes
As well as agreeing a number of international exchange programmes on women's and youth football with their Chinese counterparts, the German delegation also hatched a plan to help the Chinese with the education of coaches and referees.

Health resort
In December, under close attention from Chinese football journalists, DCFA president Karl Heinz Laudenbach welcomed 27 Chinese players aged between 15 and 19 to Bad Kissingen, the health resort with a population of 20,000 which was the CFA's preferred choice of a number of places that had asked to host the DCFA.

Coaching team
"We know what they expect and have taken up the challenge," said Laudenbach, who is also the mayor of Bad Kissingen. Helping them to do so is 63-year-old German coach Eckhard Krautzun, Chinese coach Haitao Zhang, head of the team Li Feiyu and his five assistants, who will be taking DFB and UEFA training courses.

First assessment
Krautzun's first assessment of his new charges, some of whom won the AFC's U-17 Asian Championship a few months previously, was generally positive. "They are all very well educated technically and play with passion, but they have to improve their finishing in front of goal," he said.

Winter break
To that end, perhaps the Chinese players will have benefited from their January trip to Argentina, where to help them counter the effects of the German winter, they have been invited to train with CA River Plate - one of the top clubs in Buenos Aires.

Lingua Franca
However, while the team are travelling a lot, the footballing language they use is remaining consistent. While it is hoped that the players will learn something of German culture during their time in Bad Kissingen, Krautzun is giving his orders in English and they are subsequently translated into Chinese.

Growth area
"Communication is no problem," insisted DCFA managing director Hans-Jürgen Greiner, who is something of an expert in Chinese, having spent eight years working in the world's most populous nation, which is widely regarded as a massive potential growth area for football.

Home from home
Thus far, homesickness has not been a problem either. "This is not the case now and won't be in the future," insisted Krautzun. "The boys have a goal in sight and share a passion. The know very well that they are privileged to be staying over here and they are involved in a programme almost around the clock."