SportsTalk, October 16th: The Football Association held a Football Congress today, and Xu Jiren, director of the Sports Department of Xinhua News Agency, was elected vice chairman of the Football Association.
Xu Jiren, reporter of Xinhua News Agency, director of the Sports Department of Xinhua News Agency. Representative works include “New Era of Sports”, “The Third Milestone”, “The National Games Must Keep pace with the Times”, etc. In 2021, the official website of the Football Association published Xu Jiren’s work “Reshaping the Good Ecology of Chinese Football”.
The original text is as follows:
How to improve Chinese football? This is an important topic that affects the whole society. To this end, the Xinhua News Agency’s “China Football Grassroots Tour” research team went to Dalian, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Chengdu, Kunming, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jinan, Nanjing, Zhidan and other places for research and interviews, and reached a consensus: To do a good job in Chinese football, we must first reshape a good social ecology that loves football, values football, advocates football, and supports football.
To reshape the good ecology of Chinese football, we must first create a culture of respecting football in the whole society. Looking around the world, football is a fashionable sport and has a high social status. Playing football is a natural choice for children, driven by their interest; when young players choose professional football, they choose a career that has a strong sense of honor, high income, and is desirable. Although most entrepreneurs who invest in football do not make a lot of money or even make no money at all, they serve the society and gain respect. Although government departments do not directly intervene in professional football as a market behavior, they provide support in terms of venue provision, youth training, and fund lottery taxation. But this is not entirely the case in Chinese football. Chinese football is often a frequent subject of negative topics, and often even “takes the blame” irrelevantly.
Chinese society should reconstruct the football honor system and form a cultural atmosphere in the whole society in which football is noble and investment in the football industry is glorious.
To reshape the good ecology of Chinese football, we must secondly understand the attributes of football accurately and comprehensively. What is football? Football is the world’s number one sport that makes people’s blood boil. A business platform that provides millions of wealth and many jobs. It is an educational tool for young people to cultivate their moral character. It is a lifestyle for all people to embrace nature, delight their body and mind, and enhance social interaction. It is also a public welfare platform and a public product. A city brand.
Social organizations, enterprises and individuals use the huge influence and coverage of football to carry out public welfare activities, benefiting society and benefiting The public can get twice the result with half the effort. As a public good, football is owned by all people, enjoyed by all people, and benefits all people. Its political effectiveness is reflected in winning glory for the country, uniting people’s hearts, inspiring fighting spirit, and promoting social harmony. This is especially true in poor areas and minority areas. It is particularly obvious, and it is also the proper meaning of the equalization of sports public services. Its cultural effectiveness is reflected in providing spiritual products and cultural enjoyment to the public through positive, united and friendly football games. The city brand is self-evident, and a first-class city should have There is a first-class professional football club. The reputation, social space, cultural precipitation and economic vitality that football gives to a city can often bring surprises.
If football is recognized as a public welfare platform, public product, and city brand, then governments at all levels should pay attention to football and support football. For government departments, supporting football is not optional. It is a work embellishment, but a fundamental manifestation of the people-centered development thinking. Chinese people like football, and although they often hate that iron cannot become steel, they sincerely hope that Chinese football will continue to progress. What the people pay attention to, like, and look forward to must be Governments at all levels have a duty to do a good job!
Third, to reshape the good ecology of Chinese football, we must implement “effective market, Continue to make efforts in the aspect of “promoting government”. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out: “Let the market play a decisive role in resource allocation and better play the role of the government”, that is, promote “effective market” and “promoting government” more Good combination.
Over six years since the “Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football” was announced, all parties have focused their effortsImplementing the 50 requirements of the plan, Chinese football is showing a positive trend. The government and society have paid more attention to and invested in football. The reform of football system and mechanism has achieved results. Campus football is changing with each passing day. The number of children playing football has begun to increase. Club names are non-corporate and salaries are limited. Reforms in deep-water areas such as investment restrictions have broken the ice and moved forward… The achievements are obvious to all and the results are hard-won. However, the current situation of Chinese football still cannot satisfy the people. Various reforms and the performance of the national team have yet to achieve landmark results and substantial breakthroughs. The current situation of the professional league is difficult to move forward. To sum up, there is still a lot of room for improvement in Chinese football in terms of practicing “effective market and promising government”.
Most Chinese professional clubs adopt an extremely unhealthy and unsatisfactory operating model of “high investment, low output”. Relying on the parent company’s “blood transfusion”, it lacks sufficient “blood-making” capabilities. This is related to the fact that the Chinese professional league market environment is not sound and mature enough. The TV broadcast rights, tickets, and derivative product sales that European clubs rely on to make money have become a drop in the bucket in China, and the football lottery that targets domestic professional leagues has also been delayed. On the contrary, clubs spend more on taxes, security, venues, echelon training, etc. than abroad. This is where the Chinese football market needs to change and improve.
To promote and improve the “effective market” of Chinese football, a “promising government” is essential. For many years, we have unilaterally believed that football, especially professional football and professional leagues, is just a commercial activity, and it is inconvenient for government departments to intervene. However, we do not have enough understanding of football’s public welfare effects, public products, and city brand attributes. Six years since the “Football Reform Plan” was released, government departments at all levels have gradually increased their support for football, but there is still a gap between the goal of “a promising government”. Football is also a social system project. It is not only a matter of sports and football management departments at all levels, but also requires the joint efforts of governments at all levels and society. Government functional departments such as policy planning, finance and taxation, and public security should all further increase their support for the reform and development of Chinese football in accordance with the requirements of the “Football Reform Plan”.
Of course, talking about “promising government” cannot be divorced from “effective markets.” In the process of paying attention to and supporting Chinese football, government departments at all levels must respect the professional operations of football associations at all levels, respect the laws of football and the laws of the football market, grasp the boundaries of rights, and neither be absent nor offside.
