•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Beijing. China’s new football league head has fiercely defended a proposal to include the national under-21 team in the domestic Chinese Super League from this season, despite derision from local media and fans.

Wei Di’s proposal is aimed at giving China’s future internationals more experience of training and playing together, thereby improving China’s chances at the 2014 World Cup finals.

Domestic media have poured scorn on the plan, pointing out its contradictions, pillorying Wei for being an old-fashioned adherent of the Soviet-style sport system and suggesting he must have lost his senses.

“Some journalists said I must have been kicked in the head by a donkey,” Wei told Friday’s Yangtze Evening News.

“But I am not insulting anybody’s intelligence. This was not an off-the-cuff suggestion and it will be decided by a vote.”

His plan calls for the under-21 squad to become the 17th team in the CSL, the under-19s to join division two and the under-17s to play in the third flight.

The plan to keep the nation’s most promising young players together for a long period has echoes of the dispatch of a Chinese squad for training in Hungary in the 1950s and more recently similar groups sent to Brazil and Germany.

Despite those efforts, China has qualified for the World Cup just once — in 2002. Wei, however, still sees the central planning of the state sports system as the key to future success.

“We have to adhere to the state system, which is China’s unique advantage,” Wei said.

“Nobody set me the goal [of qualifying] for 2014. It was the requirement I have set for myself. ”

The proposal will be voted on at a CSL annual general meeting over the weekend, a week ahead of the start of the new season, scheduled for next Sunday.

China

Reuters