Real madrid system coming to guangzhou academy soon
Guangzhou Evergrande is set to introduce Real Madrid’s training system to China after the clubs finalized a contract on Wednesday to open a soccer academy in Guangzhou.
Fernando Sanchez Cipitria, coach of the La Liga giant’s youth team, will work as the technical director at the academy, which is under construction in Qingyuan, Guangdong province.
Evergrande reached an agreement with Real during the Spanish club’s China tour last August. Cipitria said Real Madrid will take full charge of the school’s educational program and all staff from the club will be in Guangzhou by July.
“We will send a high-profile coaching team here and build up selection, training and evaluation systems, and a competition mechanism of the same standard as we use in Spain,” Cipitria said. “We will also train Chinese coaches at schools and select some outstanding players and coaches for more comprehensive training at Real Madrid.”
According to the club, all the coaches being dispatched to the soccer school have UEFA A licences.
Evergrande has also reached partnerships with South China Normal University and the China Foundation For Property and Alleviation to ensure quality education and help talented children with economic difficulties continue to play.
The tuition at the Evergrande soccer academy is 35,000 yuan ($5,530) a year. The first school term will start on Sept 1, with 3,150 children aged from 7 to 12.
“We will spread our selection to more than 100 cities around the country to pick 3,150 students from millions of aspirants,” Evergrande boss Xu Jiayin said.
“We also plan to open a university that only has 100 elite graduates each year, and we will benefit from the growing price of Chinese players at that time.”
Evergrande spent more than 400 million yuan on soccer last year and lost about 100 million of that. However, the real estate group made 11.78 billion yuan to become the second most profitable real estate company in China, according to its annual report released in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
“Soccer is not a simple calculation of input and output. Evergrande’s investment in soccer has obviously pushed the company’s sales volume and there are a lot of people coming for our brand,” Chinese media quoted Xia Haijun, president of the group, as saying.
tangzhe@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 03/30/2012 page23)
Sources: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
Tags: China, GUANGZHOU, Madrid