Asia, and particularly China, is a massive football market.
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Take for example the Soccer Strategy announced by the Chinese President three years ago designed to enable China to host and win a World Cup within the next 50 years. The President simultaneously announced the creation of 50,000 soccer schools by 2020 to allow young students with elite soccer potential to get intensive coaching. The Chinese Government committed the equivalent of $A3 billion in funding for this strategy – a massive sum by any measure.
Three years on, and the Chinese have already created 20,000 soccer schools. We estimate that they are already educating and coaching some two million children and graduating around 100,000 elite potential soccer-playing students each year. These numbers are set to more than double within the next two years or so. What we are seeing in China is the largest population in the world becoming a football-frenzied nation, backed by its government.
And you can add Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to the mix with enormous soccer-mad populations. There is clearly an enormous opportunity for the global football club that “gets it right” in Asia.
Australia has long been perceived as a gateway to Asia – and this is most true of higher education. Australia is the third most popular destination for international students after the United States and the United Kingdom, but given our trajectory, it is likely we will pip the UK within a couple of years.
Higher education is Australia’s third largest export after iron ore and coal, generating over $30 billion in export dollars alone. Our penetration into Asian markets in particular is second to no other country.
The University of Wollongong has had a different approach to most other Australian universities, building its international student presence through offshore campuses.
While almost half the students enrolled at UOW are international, most of them are at one of our offshore campuses - in Dubai and Hong Kong and at partner institutions in Singapore and Malaysia. We have relatively few international students in Australia but a massive global brand.
It’s a world first, and in my opinion, also a “marriage made in heaven”.
Our Player Development Program partnership with Tottenham is unique, and will be much more than a football academy of the style that already exists in Australia.
There already are a number of academies in Australia, including those associated with European clubs like Barcelona and AC Milan, but these tend to focus on kiddie camps on weeknights, weekends and school holidays. They are staffed by local coaches, only some of whom have international experience.
By contrast, the UOW Tottenham Hotspur Player Development Program will have two Football Association (FA) accredited coaches from the Tottenham Academy in the UK permanently based in Wollongong and training up to 100 students who come to UOW for the program while undertaking university studies.
The Tottenham Academy in the UK has a long history of training elite players. They spot the talent as young as seven or eight years old, and then develop players to exploit future opportunities up to the age of 16 or 17. They have a great philosophy – focusing on developing the individual skills of the player and not forcing them into a system which does not suit them.
They have developed some of the greats of English football – including former Manchester United and England great David Beckham, current Tottenham and England champion striker Harry Kane and my childhood idol Glenn Hoddle. They develop players for their own team – Harry Kane being a great example – and other elite clubs. Students with football potential will come to UOW and study for a degree of their choosing - at a university ranked among the top two percent of universities in the world. While studying for their degree they will be trained by one of the best clubs in the world – Tottenham.
They will be trained by UK professionals, to develop their football skills, but at the same time receive a university education which will set them up for a life after football. We anticipate that the students participating in this program will come from around Australia and internationally, with China an obvious target market.
This is a marriage between one of the most international universities in the world with access to Asia and one of the best clubs in the world seeking to increase its international profile especially in Asia. It’s a world first, and in my opinion, also a “marriage made in heaven”.
Professor Alex Frino, who is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Strategy) at the University of Wollongong, brokered the partnership between UOW and Tottenham FC.