In the youth training system, Ulsan Hyundai U16 coach Hyun Young min: The biggest gap in football between China and South Korea is not in the national team or club
The final of the 2023 Shanghai Tomorrow Star Champions League will be held on the 3rd, with South Korea's Ulsan Hyundai U16 team and Japan's Osaka Sakura U16 team competing for the championship. On September 2nd, the coaching roundtable of the Shanghai Tomorrow Star Champions League was held, with coaches, managers, and directors from eight participating youth training teams brainstorming.
On site host and former national football player Liu Yue asked, "The competition in Chinese and Korean football has always been fierce. In your personal opinion, where is the biggest gap between Chinese and Korean football? Is it in the adult national team, club, or youth development?".
South Korean Ulsan Hyundai U16 coach Hyun Young min expressed his personal opinion: "The football level of China and South Korea is constantly widening, and the biggest gap is not the level of the national team or the strength of the clubs, but the professional ability of the two countries' youth training system construction."
He introduced that the youth training system in South Korea is running well, and the Korean Football Association holds a targeted training competition every month for outstanding players of every youth training age group in the country to ensure mastery of the status and data of these future stars. At local clubs, South Korean youth training coaches of this age group also have a list of these potential players on their hands, which should be given special attention.
Xuan Yingmin said, "I think South Korea has a very good youth training system, and every age group is exploring and reserving youth training talents for the South Korean national team to compete in the World Cup. I am not very familiar with whether there is such a system in Chinese youth training, but from my personal experience, the gap between China's youth training level and South Korea is widening."
Upon hearing this, Shanghai U16 head coach Tao Jin took over the conversation and introduced that the Chinese Football Association has also begun to inspect and select outstanding players of all ages in the country. "I believe that the youth training model of the Korean Football Association has its merits, such as training once a month for 7 days each time. Personally, I feel that the closed training time for some Chinese national youth teams is too long, and to some extent, it even harms the interests of the clubs that transport players. China has a vast territory, and long-term training may save funds and improve efficiency, but long-term training is actually not conducive to the physical and mental health of players. I personally do not approve of long-term closed training for young players. The Korean Football Association conducts long-term closed training for young players." The practice of organizing one week of intensive training every month is very good
Hyun Young min introduced that the success rate of South Korean youth training players becoming professional players is 0.7%, which is 7%. Tottenham Hotspur U16 head coach Chenery stated that the success rate of becoming a professional player in English youth training is 0.02%, which is two out of ten thousand.
In contrast, the official data of the Chinese Football Association has not been disclosed. If we only take the players in the age group of Genbao Base from 1989 to 1991 as an example, this group of players were selected from more than 1000 football seedlings in Shanghai and about 30 were selected. In the end, most of the players played in the professional league. Wu Lei, Yan Junling, Zhang Linpeng, and Wang Shenchao are still strong national players today.
To some extent, it has long been proven that Xu Genbao's "Chongming Island model" may be the most suitable youth training method for the current situation of Chinese football; Although the sample size of Genbao Base is too small to be representative, if measured by the success rate data of high-level football countries, it may also indicate that the youth participation population in Chinese football is still too small. Due to the fact that the number of participants in Chinese youth training is the denominator, and this number is too small, professional players as numerators, even if they are one in a hundred, ultimately cannot compare to the one in a thousand of Asian football powerhouses, the one in a thousand of European football powerhouses, or it is also a manifestation of competitive sports laws.
