Media Figure: North Korea’s U20 Women’s Team Wins Championship Thanks to State-Sponsored System; Chinese Football Should Fully Embrace Marketization

At 5 AM on September 23, the U20 Women’s World Cup final saw North Korea defeat Japan 1-0 to claim the championship. Media figure Zhao Yu shared his thoughts on social media.

Zhao Yu wrote: “North Korea’s U20 women’s team has won the World Cup for their age group, and the North Korean men’s team has also performed commendably in the World Cup qualifiers. Upon seeing such achievements, some people start saying ‘North Korea doesn’t have youth training programs either, so why can they do it?’ and conclude that the problems with Chinese football are not due to youth training. This conclusion can be summed up in two words: ignorance.”

“North Korea definitely has youth training programs; their football youth training is largely conducted in a state-sponsored manner, similar to how we did it initially.”

“During our era of state-sponsored football, we also produced many outstanding athletes, becoming a top-tier team in Asia. After transitioning towards ‘marketization,’ the managers’ thinking swung back and forth, greed and a lack of respect for the industry led to disunity, and without adhering to the most basic laws of football, the result was a collapse of the foundation. Even with 8.5 slots for Asia, it’s difficult to qualify for the World Cup.”

“Should we attribute the failure to marketization? Of course not! To develop professional football and the football industry, we must take the market-oriented path because only then can we reach a larger world—the Europeans have concluded this after a century of practice. We must not return to the past for any immediate or possible ‘success.’ Both the state-sponsored system and marketization can achieve results in sports. Since we’ve already come this far, we must ‘look ahead and not look back.'”

“The biggest issue we face now is not marketization but being neither one thing nor the other. Wanting to fully embrace marketization yet being constrained by traditional mindsets and ways of doing things leads to an indistinct product. I hope Chinese football can become purer and fully entrust this most market-driven industry to the market.”