To transform football, China turns to an American guru from Japan

KUALA LUMPUR — American Tom Byer has been posed the same question countless times. From powerful government officers, football officials, to the media and sponsors, they all ask him the same thing: Can he help China win the World Cup?

“My answer is always the same,” said the Japan-based coaching guru from New York who has been given the task by Chinese President Xi Jinping to overhaul football development in the world’s second-largest economy.
 “I don’t want to give a guarantee or a fixed date (with regard to) when China can win the World Cup. But if they follow my (youth development) philosophies, they will be giving the country as good a chance as ever before.
“More importantly, before targeting the World Cup, China must first aim at smaller goals. Participating regularly at the FIFA Under-17 Youth World Cup would be a good start.”
The sprightly 55-year-old was speaking to TODAY on the sidelines of the inaugural Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Grassroots Conference in Kuala Lumpur last week, where he was one of the speakers on youth development in Asia.
Mr Mohamed Zainudeen, the coach of Singapore’s Cerebral Palsy team, who attended the conference, said: “People in football development should strongly consider his views because he is forward-thinking.
“As a coach, I’m really impressed by his methods.”
A former professional player with Hitachi FC in the Japan Football League in the 1980s who turned to coaching youngsters following his retirement, Mr Byer made a name for himself as a coaching guru known to millions of Japanese children as “Tomsan”.
He even has a manga series based on himself and has appeared on a daily TV show for the last 13 years to share his coaching methods. Japanese football star Keisuke Honda was said to be a huge fan of his shows when he was a boy.
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese kids have attended his clinics and academies including Borussia Dortmund star Shinji Kagawa and Women’s World Cup winner Aya Miyama.
Mr Byer has been so successful with his grassroots training programmes and in expanding the Japanese talent pool over the past 20 years — and ensuring Japan’s national teams qualify for the Asian Cup and World Cup regularly — the Chinese government has poached him from its arch rival to do likewise for the world’s most-populous country.  His job title?  Head Technical Advisor for the Chinese School Football Programme Office and Official CSF Grassroots Ambassador.
And it seems he has gain popularity in just over two years in China, with reportedly 300,000 followers on his Weibo account.
A PRESIDENT’S PLAN
Mr Byer’s main task is to drive the state-funded China School Football (CSF) programme, part of President Xi’s ambitious 10-year football plan that kicked off last year.
The plan was borne out of frustrations at the country’s failure to make a mark on the world football stage. China have qualified for the World Cup just once, in 2002, and lost all their games, scoring none.
President Xi’s target is to, by 2025, create a Chinese sports economy worth US$850 billion (S$1.2 trillion) — more than double of the current entire global sports economy estimated at about US$400 billion.
With the goal of hosting and winning the World Cup by 2030, the football-loving Chinese leader wants to widen the talent pool via the CSF programme. Under his order, football is now part of the curriculum in 50,000 schools across the country, a move that will produce an estimated 250,000 top youth talents by 2025 that can be “harvested” by football academies across the country.
“We must develop and revitalise soccer to ensure we are a strong nation of sports,” according to a statement issued last year after a meeting of China’s Central Reform Leading Group chaired by Mr Xi.
“World Cup qualification is always the end game for all countries involved in football,” explained Mr Byer.
“China has hosted the Olympics and won countless gold medals, but the World Cup has eluded them.”
Regional Chinese governments are contributing towards Mr Xi’s US$850 billion vision. Many clubs —such as five-time champions Guangzhou Evergrande — are either owned by state-run corporations or by firms that have interests in real estate, and thus have business links to the state.
Ti’ao Dongli, the sports broadcasting arm of state-owned investment firm China Media Capital, last year paid US$1.3 billion for the five-year broadcast rights of the Chinese Super League (CSL).
The sudden influx of serious money saw CSL clubs splashing out millions to sign big-name stars such as Colombia striker Jackson Martinez, Argentina forward Ezequiel Lavezzi and Brazil midfielder Ramires. These foreign stars take up key positions in their teams, depriving local Chinese players of valuable competitive experience. Last season, for example, only two local forwards are in the top-15 goalscorers’ list.
Montenegrin striker Dejan Damjanovic, who was CSL’s third-highest scorer last season while playing for Beijing Guoan, told AP: “In all teams, it is the foreigners who are making the difference and scoring the goals and so clubs are buying strikers and midfielders to help them achieve their aims.
“The China national team is having problems because of this. There must be improvements. They need to improve their young players and the youth facilities if they want to be one of the best leagues and national teams in Asia.”
Mr Byer’s role in China is exactly that — to put strategies in place to help the Chinese kids learn how to play football and how to play it better.
“I have a very different approach to football development than the traditionalists,” the American said with a tinge of pride. “It’s not about certifying more coaches, it’s not all about grooming the elites. It’s about targeting the masses and developing a football culture that is conducive to developing players.
“Most people don’t know what kids are supposed to be able to do with a football at their feet. I’ve sat with technical directors, top coaches who have won leagues and World Cups, and most of them don’t understand development when it comes to very young children.”
DON’T JUST KICK THE BALL
Mr Byer’s blueprint boils down to this: As soon as children can walk, give them a small ball and ensure that they are not constantly kicking it. They should be learning to protect the ball while also learning core techniques such as stopping and starting with a ball, changing direction, cutting and turning with a ball. “By the time they are six, and when they are ready to enter a football coaching curriculum, they would have accomplished a certain level of basic competence with the ball,” he said.
He showed TODAY video clips of an “experiment” he did with his two sons — now 10 and seven — where he painstakingly filmed their development every year since they were two.
There were videos of his boys at two, still in diapers, shifting the ball from one tiny foot to the other, tumbling at times while trying to dribble down the hall way, as Mr Byer’s voice boomed with encouragement in the background. It appeared to support his theory.
“Most people think football is just a kicking game. Go out to any park at any weekend, and you will see fathers kicking the ball back and forth with their young kids. That’s wrong,” he said.
“People would be amazed at how many children who have been playing for several years cannot dribble straight to ‘point A’, make a turn and go to ‘point B’. Kids are not learning the fundamentals of football from a very young age.
“And the parents — not the coaches — play a very important part in inculcating these habits at home.”
EDUCATING THE MASSES
Mr Byer is now attempting to educate China’s parents and PE teachers to get their children and students to “master the ball” as soon as possible.
“There are over 100 million kids in China under the age of six. This age group is the most important for me,” he said.
The Chinese Ministry of Education is now solely in charge of the CSF programme.
In 2014, 6,000 schools in China adopted the pilot programme, exposing more than 2.1 million kids to football three times a week. Mr Byer said they are now on track to increase the number of schools to 20,000 next year, before hitting 50,000 schools by 2021.
Mr Byer has been conducting mass meetings with parents of toddlers to share his philosophy, and plans are in place for a daily three-minute coaching TV spot on the China Education TV. The Chinese government is also sending him on a tour of all 32 provinces to promote the TV show and the CSF programme.
While China is blessed with a huge talent pool that Mr Byer can work with, can his methods be applied to a small country like Singapore?
“Football development can happen in any country if there is understanding on how it really takes place,” Mr Byer said. “Uruguay only has a population of 3 million people and it happens there. But the difference is a having a culture which understands how football is developed and the role that family plays in the process. It’s all about getting kids involved from a very young age.
“In Singapore, you talk about the lack of space to play outside. You talk about weather. You talk about the dangers of leaving your toddler out at the playground. Well, you can now do it in your own living room,” he said.
“Instead of having your toddler sit in the living room and have his eyes glued to the TV, put a small ball in front of him and encourage him to play with it.”
Whether his methods can help China realise its World Cup dreams, Mr Byer believes it might take a generation to find out.
“Grassroots football has to be viewed as a marathon and not a sprint,” he said. “Look at Japan, where I have been involved in grassroots football for 20 years. The average player is already so strong technically. And you can see the benefits. It gives a country better competition, a better player pool for selection, which means better results at the top end.”
Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who is now coach of CSL side Shanghai SIPG, says President Xi’s plan will bear fruits in time to come. “Ten years ahead, 15 years ahead, I am quite sure the China national team will compete to win the World Cup,” said the Swede.
“The money is here and the football is getting better. I think attitudes have changed. The Chinese have realised they weren’t at the elite level in world football and they want to reach it. This is reality for a long time. China will soon be a world power in football.”
But Beijing-based sports promoter Wang Qi, whom the Chinese government asked for advice when drafting Mr Xi’s 10-year plan, is not as optimistic.
“Many Chinese officials’ biggest problem is that they only know how to fawn on their superiors,” Wang said in a radio interview with NPR. “Xi Jinping likes football, the leadership wants to develop it, so they all rush to build football fields. But how long more will Xi Jinping remain in power? Seven years. Will the enthusiasm last?”