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March 3, 2013

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Coaching China's couch potatoes

FORMER American professional footballer Tom Byer is a household name (Tomsan) in Japan where his TV shows, manga and grassroots football program are credited with helping to gradually lift the national men's and women's teams from obscurity to world status.

If only his trickle-up strategy could work the same magic in China where the teams are abysmal, children are pampered and increasingly obese, and most parents want their only child to focus on homework, not football.

Byer - and apparently Chinese sports and education authorities - think his advice and transplanted grassroots program can in time boost the fortunes of Chinese football and help build a football nation. It won't happen overnight. The aim is to build a broad program teaching basics to very young children.

Byer has said Chinese footballers appear to lack "mental toughness" and easily get frustrated. But he says teaching strong basic techniques at a young age can help overcome these issues.

In Japan, Tomsan's programs and multi-media approach are credited with strengthening grassroots football, thereby helping to elevate the national men's and women's teams. For 13 years he appeared on a prime morning show for children, demonstrating "Tomsan's Soccer Technics" and his program has been featured in manga. He has established football clinics and coaching schools nationwide.

Today, Japan's men's national team is No. 1 in Asia and 28th in the world; from the early 1990s to 2011, the team won four Asian Cup titles. The women's team won silver at the 2012 London Olympics.

Last August, the Chinese Football Association appointed Byer, a 25-year resident of Tokyo, as head technical adviser for the Chinese School Football Program and official ambassador of Chinese Grassroots Football.

The programs promote both football and general fitness in a nation plagued by inactivity and obesity among children, young people and adults.

Because of a huge downturn in grassroots football, the Chinese Football Association started the China School Football program in 2009 to promote it nationwide and help schools start soccer programs.

According to Byer it now covers around 90 cities, 5,800 schools and around two million children. Most get two hours of football weekly. Around 10 percent belong to school football clubs and play several times a week.

But the full roll-out is yet to come, involving "omni media," special training for coaches and clinics nationwide.

Byer, a native of upstate New York, is famous for coaching children aged four to 12, focusing on basic, technical skills. He also trains PE coaches and develops multimedia soccer education, including television, manga and DVDs. Over the years he and his company T3 have helped train young players in Indonesia, Nepal, and India.

"This is great timing because Chinese football is booming right now with the premier league. People are putting millions and millions of dollars at the top. But this (the grassroots) is where the problem is," Byer told Shanghai Daily in an interview.

He visited Shanghai recently to discuss his ideas for the China School Football Program with the city's education administrators.

As Byer sees it, throwing money at the top end importing big-name players doesn't fix the grassroots problem.

Chinese footballers lack both technical skills and mental toughness, he has said. Last year he told Wild East Football (an English-language website about Chinese football): "... My impression from what I have watched and of the National Team is they lack some basics. The Chinese players also seem to lack the mental toughness to deal with the many different conditions during a game. It seems they become quite frustrated when they are behind and could adopt a stronger mentality to endure a full 90 minutes. But surely lack of technique can cause lots of problems for a player's concentration."

Byer and his Japanese wife have two sons, aged four and seven.

Q: What's your role with the China School Football program?

A: [We] implement a curriculum focusing on improving very, very young children with an emphasis on the technical side. We empower kids to play on their own ... The greatest players, Messi, Ronaldo, put in many, many hours of practice by themselves, but a lot of kids do not know what to practice. So our content is basically focused on one player, one ball, and hundreds and hundreds of exercises. We develop it with technology and in the beginning we put out the video, then the DVD, now we are introducing smartphone apps to China and Japan. We work with Chinese School Football to implement content and a training program for coaches, mostly PE teachers in public schools.

Q: What makes Chinese School Football Program distinctive?

A: No other country has a program like this. In Japan, it is all done individually by volunteers outside schools, but this is a huge organization. That's why it's exciting. I wouldn't be a part of it if I didn't think it would succeed. I have never seen a program in such grand scale grow so quickly, and be so well organized by the government. There is nothing like that in the world.

It's also great timing because Chinese football is booming right now with the premier league. People are putting millions and millions of dollars at the top. But this (grassroots) is where the problem is. The problem is that people think throwing tens of millions of dollars at the top will automatically make China a football country and it will start to play in the World Cup. But that doesn't happen. There has to be a massive investment at the bottom end, to see the benefits for the top end.

Q: Will parents be persuaded to support sport outside school?

A: In China the basic problem is that sport is viewed as a distraction from education. However, sports is an essential part of learning life skills. The biggest challenge is to educate the parents to understand that sport is a very critical part of a young child's social, physical and mental development ... we will make it attractive so more people want to get into it ... And just think of the number of kids in China compared to Japan. If you just get a tiny fraction of them playing, you will just by accident produce great players.

Q: What is your approach of improving "mental toughness?"

A: Mental toughness is the by-product of technique. When players do not have good techniques, they will fall out very quickly. But when you have good techniques from a very young age, this instills confidence. And if you have confidence, you play with no pressure. So automatically it makes you more confident and psychologically makes you stronger.




 

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