Ansari into the attack for the 11th over might also attract some criticism, too. The score was 36 for 2 at the time and Ansari, though he bo

Ansari into the attack for the 11th over might also attract some criticism, too. The score was 36 for 2 at the time and Ansari, though he bo

20.06.2018 15:55

BEIJING -- As coaches take notes, teenagers dribble footballs through a course of cones on Ritan Middle Schools gleaming artificial field in eastern Beijing, part of a massive program to promote soccer as a pillar of Chinas rise to global prominence.The 14-year-old boys and girls were being scrutinized under a newly added section of Beijings high school entrance exam, which beginning this year includes an elective football skills test in addition to such standards as Chinese, math, and English.While the skills tests comprise only a small part of the placement exam, the fact education officials tweaked a notoriously rigid standardized test is one sign of how thoroughly China is mobilizing under President Xi Jinpings drive to overhaul the game domestically and turn the Chinese team into a World Cup winner by 2050.The football revolution spans from schoolyards to the top professional league. Local officials tout how thousands of high schools are becoming government-designated football priority schools. Cities announce hundreds of football complexes being built every week.Chinese clubs are paying record fees to woo stars away from Europe and boost interest in the domestic league. And in the past year alone, Chinese investors have spent a staggering $3 billion to buy stakes in European clubs, with the stated aim of bringing football know-how back to China.Weve talked about football under several top leaders but until now, there has never been this will, said Pang Xiaozhong, former director of the Institute of Sport Science, an arm of Chinas state sports program. Its unprecedented.Boosting Chinas standing in the game is part of Xis push to raise Chinas global prestige. With the national mens team ranked No. 78, a turnaround would be nothing short of cathartic. While the womens team has often found international success, Chinas men have qualified for only one World Cup, bouncing out of the 2002 competition without scoring a goal.Decades after Chinas government successfully created a Soviet-style sports juggernaut, emphasizing highly technical disciplines such as diving, the question is whether the sports-by-diktat approach can work for the worlds most popular game. Unlike sports such as gymnastics, in which elite state academies develop selected prospects from a young age, commentators say football success will require a huge player base and vibrant, structured youth leagues -- all of which China is trying to create practically from scratch.In May, the cabinet issued a 50-point plan that called on local and provincial governments to promote football by setting up school programs, creating amateur leagues, offering tax breaks for pitch construction and recruiting foreign coaches with the goal of establishing 70,000 new fields and producing 50 million school-age players by 2020.In a top-down system under which the ruling Communist Party still issues five-year economic plans, this state-led mix of infrastructure investment and mass grassroots mobilization is precisely what Beijing sees as needed to bring home a World Cup trophy.In China, the role of the government is always the biggest and most effective, Pang said. Football is something we can grasp if were methodic.Although the government has not released cost estimates for its development plan, analysts say hundreds of millions could be spent over the next five years on facilities alone.What has been made public, however, is the $300 million this year that Chinese Super League clubs have splashed out recruiting stars such as Ramires, Alex Teixeira, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Jackson Martinez and former Arsenal striker Gervinho. And that does not include the wages on offer at Chinese clubs, which are now some of the highest in the world.Clubs have also splurged on high-profile coaches, including ex-Real Madrid and Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini, former Brazil boss Luiz Felipe Scolari and one-time England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson.Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, said theres no reason to doubt China could become a regional football superpower. But he warned there were similarities with the governments approach to economic planning that, despite its successes, can lead to inefficiency or graft. One example is the wave of interest that followed the 2002 World Cup run, which quickly fizzled out when the domestic league was hit by rampant corruption scandals.The leadership sketches a hugely ambitious and yet ambiguous vision and people lower down the chain -- government bureaus, provincial governments -- and those hoping to curry favor, especially in business, pick it up and run with it, Sullivan said. The problem is everyone often runs in different directions.Chinese football investors are already scrambling to buy into storied clubs such as Inter Milan and AC Milan, sometimes speaking of those deals as patriotic buyers.In a recent interview, Jiantong Tony Xia, who took over Englands Aston Villa in May, said a main objective was to eventually field Chinese players and establish academies.Its been proven that buying foreign firms with know-how and then bringing that back to the domestic industry has been the most efficient route, Xia said.As Chinas most powerful leader in decades, Xis personal influence on the promotion of football has been enormous.The president makes no secret of his love for the game which he picked up as a child playing alongside the scions of other Communist Party leaders at the elite Beijing 101 Middle School.A 1983 exhibition match between China and English club Watford was said to have left a particular impression on Xi. China was then just opening up to the outside world after decades of Maoism, and when Watford trounced the Chinese national team, Xi left the Beijing Workers Stadium fuming, childhood friend Nie Weiping recalled in an interview years later with state media.He felt hurt watching the match, Nie was quoted as saying. But hes continued to always follow Team China.Those presidential concerns appear to be having a direct effect at the grassroots.On the leafy Ritan Middle School campus, extracurricular director Xu Fuxing described how the public schools budget has risen 25 percent since Xis administration made sports an educational priority.The campus recently resurfaced an artificial field and Xu has hired youth football academy Huawen to train its students. Aside from offering traveling competitions that barely existed a few years ago, Huawen employs coaches such as Juan Varela, a former trainer with Atletico Madrid who moved to China earlier this year and works with help from translators.Speaking over Varelas cries of Spread out! Spread out! as eight-year-old kids swarmed after loose balls, Xu said the national plans key element is to encourage the formation of clubs and leagues to offer competitive experiences to young players.Even small measures such as Beijings new football exam have encouraged kids to try the game and, as Xu said, It symbolizes much more to come. Belgium Koen Casteels World Cup Jersey . 1 position. The Mustangs (6-0), who beat Queens 50-31 last weekend, earned 17 first-place votes and 287 points in voting by the Football Reporters of Canada. Western was last ranked first in the country in October 2011. Belgium Romelu Lukaku World Cup Jersey . 1 position. The Mustangs (6-0), who beat Queens 50-31 last weekend, earned 17 first-place votes and 287 points in voting by the Football Reporters of Canada. Western was last ranked first in the country in October 2011. http://www.cheapworldcupbelgiumjerseys.com/belgium-dries-mertens-world-cup-jersey/ . The defence is doing its part, too. Drew Brees threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first half and the guys on the other side made sure that was enough, sending the Saints to a 17-13 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Thursday night. Belgium Mousa Dembele World Cup Jersey . Goals from Jerome Boateng, Franck Ribery and Thomas Mueller extended Bayerns unbeaten run to a record 37 matches. "This record is incredible," Bayern coach Pep Guardiola said. Belgium Eden Hazard World Cup Jersey .ca looks back at the stories and moments that made the year memorable. There is a moment - a brief moment - at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when the naive might be seduced into thinking it is a gentle road-trip movie.You know things are going to go wrong, though. The word massacre is a pretty unsubtle clue as to where the plot is heading. You know youre in for a tough ride.It was a bit like that on the first day in Visakhapatnam. England started well enough but, the second they lost the toss on this surface, you feared there was trouble ahead. From the moment Virat Kohli got off the mark with a cover-driven boundary off James Anderson, he looked daunting. And, on a pitch that is already showing signs of uneven bounce and spin, you know already that England face a monumental struggle to stay in this game.The toss in Rajkot was crucial, too. It gave England a chance to apply some scoreboard pressure and the time to ease their way into the series. But the anticipated deterioration in that surface came too late to influence the outcome.It looks as if Visakhapatnam is going to be different. Even before lunch on the first day, one delivery from Stuart Broad jagged away from the bat sharply off the pitch and a few deliveries seemed to take a piece of the surface when they bounced. Batting last is likely to prove much tougher.In such circumstances, it is vital the bowling side take any half-chance that comes along in the first innings. Think of the Ashes Test in Adelaide in 2010. Australia won the toss and batted first on a typically excellent batting pitch, but a brilliant bit of fielding by Jonathan Trott in the first over resulted in the run-out of Simon Katich and England took advantage.Something similar might have happened here. Had Adil Rashid been able to cling on to a tough chance offered by Kohli when he had scored 56, England would have had a key breakthrough. But the chance went to ground and Kohli went on - and on - to make a high-class century. He may well have made the defining contribution to this Test already. The next time Rashid sees Chris Scott (the Durham keeper who dropped Brian Lara in the early stages of his 501 in 1994) they will surely exchanging knowing looks.While it might be tempting to dismiss the chance as one of those things there was an element of self-inflicted injury about it. With the bowlers unable to find any swing and both batsmen having a couple of questions to answer against the short ball - Cheteshwar Pujara has been hit four times in this series and Kohli is an almost compulsive hooker and puller - England had clearly decided upon a plan of attack. Ben Stokes was to pitch short in the hope that one of the batsmen might hit the ball to one of the men back for the hook.The flaw in the plan was the choice of fielder at long leg. Rashid is not, by domestic standards, a bad fielder and has pretty safe hands. He is a little slow by the standards of this team so it would, under normal circumstances, make sense to hide him at long leg.But in these circumstances, with the slips all but out of business and the mishit hook offering Englands best chance of a catch, it would have made more sense to place a better fielder in the position.Rashid was a little slow to react and, though he just about made it to the ball, he was not in a good position to cling on to the catch. It was not straightforward, but it was the sort of chance that several of this England team would have taken far more often than not. To compound the error, Rashid let the ball slip under his body to the boundary later in the same oveer.dddddddddddd Stokes looked as if he could drink hot blood.Alastair Cook recognised the error. Within a few minutes, he had replaced Rashid with the quicker and more athletic Anderson at long leg. But the moment had gone. Kohli had learned his lesson. He wasnt going to make the same mistake.If it seems harsh to focus on such a fleeting moment, it is because Test cricket in such circumstances is harsh and unforgiving. Attention to detail over such issues can make all the difference and, by leaving Rashid at long leg, England failed to make the most of their perfectly reasonable plan.Later, Cook also failed to take advantage of the second new ball. Just two balls after Anderson had Ajinkya Rahane edging a classic outswinger, Ravi Ashwin might have been caught at gully edging a similar delivery. Instead, England had a third man and a deep square leg.The decision to introduce Zafar Ansari into the attack for the 11th over might also attract some criticism, too. The score was 36 for 2 at the time and Ansari, though he bowled nicely enough in that first spell (six overs for 19 runs), was unable to sustain the pressure.There was some logic in the decision to turn to him, though. As a left-arm spinner, he was trying to take the ball away from the two right-handed batsmen and Stuart Broad was off the pitch (at that stage he was struggling with a cut sustained in Rajkot and opened by a committed piece of fielding; later he struggled with a sore right foot that may well see him rested for the third Test). It wasnt that the decision was wrong, it was just it didnt work out.That England remain with any sort of foothold in the game is largely due to the performance of Anderson. Unable to gain much movement with the first ball of the match, he nevertheless took three of the four wickets to fall - bouncing out M Vijay with a sharp short ball and persuading Rahane to nick an outswinger - and managed to gain dangerous swing with the second new ball.We thought the way the new ball played in the morning it was the easiest time to bat and didnt swing that much, Anderson said afterwards. Every time I pitched it up Vijay hit me for four, so I went short. I watched the first Test so I knew there was a chance with the short ball.The pitch is quite abrasive and not chewing the ball up as we would like. The outfield is lush so there are not many areas to get the ball to reverse. We got a little bit from 40 to 55 overs but it was tiny.I thought we bowled pretty well. There were a couple of periods we let it get away: half an hour before tea we let ourselves down a bit with the ball and in the field. But on that pitch we are reasonably happy with that.The wicket was tough to bowl on. The outfield was heavy - there will be some sore legs tomorrow - and the pitch played well. The two guys who got hundreds they set about their business and showed they are world-class. They made it very difficult to bowl at them.Anderson also warned that conditions could deteriorate sharply, so it was essential for England to strike early on day two and for their batsmen to score heavily in the first innings.Im not sure the pitch will stay together as well as Rajkot, he said. There are signs of it keeping low. There will be more variable bounce and we have seen a few spin. So we are in tough position and we need to have a good day with the ball and an extremely good go with the bat. Cheap Jerseys Throwback Wholesale Jerseys From China Youth NFL Jerseys Wholesale Wholesale Throwback Jerseys China Jerseys Cheap Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys Youth NFL Jerseys China ' ' '


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