Reporter Chen Yong reports In the past two years, the country has established a Chinese football development strategy with youth football as the core, and at the youth football level, the improvement and coordination of the event is an important task.

At the level of youth football competitions in China, the main directions at present are: first, to fully promote the integration of sports and education, as is the case with the Youth Championships, focusing on improving the quality of local qualifiers, and at the same time exploring the improvement of the quality of the national finals; Second, the campus football event is based on the improvement of the prefecture-level campus football league, strengthens the popularization function, and then improves on this basis, and realizes the improvement of the event on the basis of the Youth Championship; Third, we will fully integrate the competition, focus on high-quality events, reduce unnecessary events, increase pressure on high-quality events, and reduce pressure on the overall competition, so as to promote the all-round development of Chinese youth football; Fourth, promote the home-and-away league system, the Youth League is developing in this direction, and the local competitions of campus football should also be the same; Fifth, the overall planning and coordination of the event calendar, which is the main task at present, but a question arises, that is, where does the money come from for holding events and participating in events?

The first Centennial Famous School Cup sponsored by this newspaper, as a public welfare event, one of the biggest features is that the accommodation and food are all free, from arrival in Jinan to departure, the organizing committee is responsible for all the accommodation and food of the participating teams, transportation in the city, venues, event organization and other expenses, 21 teams outside Jinan, only need to be responsible for the transportation costs between cities.

In the current youth competition system, such conditions can be said to be extremely rare, and only how to come to Jinan, the school's approach is completely inconsistent, generally speaking, there are at least five schemes: first, the school pays the fee in full, teachers and students have no worries; Second, in the case of insufficient school funds, the local education department attaches great importance to it and provides corresponding funds for the participating teams; Third, the school and parents negotiate together to share the relevant costs, so as to reduce the financial pressure on each other at the two levels; Fourth, in some schools with insufficient funds, the parent committee will take the lead, and the parents will pay the corresponding expenses. Objectively speaking, this time there is only a large transportation cost, which is actually the lowest in the cost of participating in various events; Fifth, seek corresponding sponsorship, as an example of the High School Affiliated to Peking University, where the participating teams are not football students, but pure ordinary students, and the parent committee directly sponsors the expenses.

This newspaper has learned that at the level of campus football, official competitions, such as the national youth championship qualifiers and finals and provincial and municipal campus football events, the participation fee is naturally guaranteed by the school. Taking Jinan Licheng No. 2 Middle School as an example, their three teams participated in the finals of the Youth Championship, and the cost guarantee cost was hundreds of thousands of yuan, but the school still gave full support. In addition, the school not only supports the team's participation fee, but also organizes the team to go to Beihai and other places for winter training, which is also a large expense.

At the level of the invitational competition, it depends on the specific situation of the school, and there are also three programs: full support, partial support and parent support.
In fact, the cost of participation is not only to go out to play, but also to implement the home-and-away system of midweek and weekly competitions, which also requires transportation costs. There are also a variety of modes of cost settlement, the school is responsible for the bus and collective travel for the better schools, and more schools implement different ways according to their own conditions, such as through the parent committee, divided into several groups by the parents' private car to take the children to the away game.

During the first Centennial School Cup, this newspaper had in-depth communication with the participating teams and Jinan campus football people, and came to the conclusion that most schools are facing the problem of tight campus football funds.

Primary school and junior high school are compulsory education stage, and at the same time, the school has fewer school teams, and the problem of school funding is actually more prominent, but in comparison, the official competition of the primary school campus football team is basically carried out in the city, even if the game is played in the county, through various methods, the traffic problem can always be solved; As for invitational tournaments, they are generally funded by parents.

The official competitions at the junior high school stage are also dominated by intra-city competitions, and the official inter-city competitions are currently mainly the youth competitions and qualifiers. Like primary schools, invitational competitions are funded by parents, but schools with better strength are also directly funded by schools.

The situation of high schools varies widely, some high schools have abundant funds and provide relatively generous funds for campus football, while some high schools have narrow sources of funds, leaving relatively tight funds for campus football.

Including hosting competitions, taking the Youth Championships as an example, the first Youth Championships will be held in 2022, and the second Youth Championships will be held in 2023. In terms of invitational tournaments, if a higher fee is implemented, it can naturally ensure the smooth holding of the event, but if the fee is low, it will also face a gap. In addition, if the invitational tournament is configured for live streaming, the corresponding fee will also increase.

School leaders attach great importance to it and are an important source of funding for campus football. Ma Yandong, the football coach and deputy director of the student development department of Jinan Foreign Chinese School, who watched the first Centennial Famous School Cup, told this newspaper that the school is rebuilding a high-standard football field, and the school's field conditions will reach a very high level.

On the basis of the high attention of the school, the source of funding for campus football is first of all special funds.

Song Yu, deputy director of the Jinan Municipal Education Bureau, said: "The national youth campus football characteristic schools will set up special funds for campus football separately according to the scale of not less than 3% of the annual school public funds to support football teaching, training, competition and other activities. ”

Feng Baoan, principal of Hefei No. 1 Middle School, introduced the use of special funds: "Our school has set up a special fund for football work, and the annual special fund is not less than 3% of the school's public funds. From the perspective of the previous year, most of the special funds for football in our school are used to participate in national football competitions to ensure that athletes can have the opportunity to practice and grow at a higher level of competition. ”

In addition, local education departments and schools are also making every effort to expand funding channels, "Jinan Municipal Education Bureau actively explores through socialization, market-oriented operation, and multi-channel fundraising. Encourage and guide social forces to donate, broaden the source channels of campus football funds, and guide private capital to support campus football teacher training, venue construction, training competitions, etc. Enhance the hematopoietic function of campus football, establish a campus football industrial park + model led by the fund model and adapted to our city". Song Yu said.

In terms of schools, a person from a high school who participated in the first Centennial Famous School Cup introduced that the school canteen is one of the effective methods, while insisting on low prices and high standards, part of the operating profits is used to support campus football and other projects, so that campus football also has relatively abundant funds.

During the first Centennial University Cup, the topic of commercial sponsorship was also discussed, and the current policy requirement is to strictly prohibit commercial advertising and commercial activities from entering the campus, so that the funding source of the event is greatly restricted.

In fact, the vast majority of campus football matches in China, whether they are official matches or invitational matches, are generally held outside the campus, and naturally there will be no ban on commercial sponsorship, but the key to the problem is that campus football matches outside the campus cannot achieve the popularization function of campus football in the first place; The second is that the quality of the game is greatly reduced in the absence of spectators and fans. It only makes sense to have a school football game on campus. However, when entering the campus, there is no way to show the enterprises that sponsor and support campus football, which is a contradiction and a problem.

In the context of the current vigorous development of campus football, campus football people call for sponsors with public welfare attributes, such as sports clothing and supplies, drinking water and dairy products, etc., in fact, they can set up a white list system, and at the same time set up strict access conditions, such as sponsorship to have public welfare attributes, but also in the specified time and area, such as limited to football fieldside billboards during campus football matches, so that it will naturally help the financial problem of campus football.