Chinese vice premier calls for closer China-Germany football cooperation

COLOGNE, Germany -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong Saturday called on China and Germany to build a stable and sustainable football strategic cooperative partnership.

The Chinese vice premier was here attending the first China-Germany Football Development Symposium at the German Bundesliga football club FC Cologne.

Chinese leaders attach great importance to sports and have explicitly urged the revitalization of football in China which is highly expected by hundreds of millions of Chinese football fans, said Liu.

The structural reform of football in China has made substantive progress, with school football now being vigorously developed, she said.

Liu underlined in her speech that by the year of 2020, the number of football fields in China will increase to over 70,000, 50,000 trainers will be cultivated for school football, and 20,000 football specialized schools will be built up.

Regarding the further development of China-Germany football cooperation, Liu called for strengthening exchanges between national teams of China and Germany as well as their professional football clubs, jointly expanding win-win cooperation in the football industry, and further improving the bilateral exchange mechanism of youth football.

At the symposium, German Football League President Reinhard Rauball, German Football Association General Secretary Friedrich Curtius and representatives from FC Cologne, FC Bayern, FC Schalke 04 and other clubs spoke about the training system for teenagers in the professional association football league Bundesliga and the youth training models in their clubs.

On Friday, representatives from the two sides signed the German-Chinese football cooperation agreement in Berlin.