5th enrolment of Wanda’s "China’s Future Football Stars" completes

A training specialist talks to candidates.
Candidates practise on the playground.The enrolment of “China’s Future Football Stars 2016” by Wanda has recently wrapped up at Wanda Institute in Langfang, Hebei. 30 young footballers stood out among 300 candidates during the selection by six foreign youth academy training specialists from Atlético Madrid and these 30 young players will be studying abroad in Spain.

2016 marks the fifth year of Wanda's "China’s Future Football Stars" project. Teenager football players receiving training in Spain in the previous four terms have gained leaping progress in football skills, Spanish language capacity and academic learning. Wanda's "China’s Future Football Stars" project has established sound reputation and brand image through four-year efforts, attracting football teenagers and their parents nationwide. There are 400 players signing up for the second-round selection, breaking the historic record in applicants in the past four years and making this selection increasingly more competitive.

In January this year, 6 teenager training experts from Atletico Madrid visited the football training base in Wuzhou, Guangxi, watched the official matches and training matches of the 800 players of the 2003 age group in 32 teams and selected over 80 players for the second-round short list. After three months of work, nearly 400 qualified excellent players from various club teams, football associations and campus football teams. 300 players selected from the two approaches gathered at Langfang Wanda Institute for the second-round selection of 30 players for overseas study and 20 back-up players by the 6 Spanish football experts.

This selection is conducted on a principle of "fairness and justice" and by the 6 teenager training experts from Atletico Madrid. The final list will be released on the official websites of Wanda and Atletico Madrid as well as media like Sina.com after review.

From 2012 till now, Wanda Group invested over RMB 300 million to send 30 teenager football players selected from nationwide to study in Spain for 3-6 years each year, with an aim of cultivating stars of football to empower the football sports of China. These excellent foot players at age of 12 or 13 will be sent to Atletico Madrid and receive the same training as the players at the same age in the club as well as necessary academic learning classes. Currently this project is functioning well, and the 120 teenager players are thriving in Spain with football skills growing significantly. In 2015, 16 players from this project were selected to China National Football team under-16 (China Junior Team), taking up half of the China Junior Team.