The Diplomat in Spain

The Diplomat

Since four years now, Evergrande has been training Chinese elite footballers in Spain in collaboration with Real Madrid. Each season, 25 boys from 13 years old are selected to train and study in Spain, where there are already 100 students.

It’s not just about training soccer players, Evergrande sources explain. They also give great importance given to the teaching, looking “to promote the integral development of young athletes“. For this reason, the school that Evergrande Soccer Training established in Madrid -a subsidiary of which this company opened in China in 2012- is synchronized with the basic education of that country, and is taught by specially trained chinese teachers.

The company plans to expand the academic system from three to five years and also that Real Madrid coaches can offer their knowledge in China to boys from 9 to 13 years, from which the selected ones will later come out to complete their training in the Spanish capital.

Since 2019, Evergrande invests 50 million yuan every year to organize the Evergrande Cup in Spain. A tournament in which players from 13 to 18 years old play, in their respective categories, 48 ​​games a year against the best Spanish teams.

Evergrande’s collaboration with Real Madrid dates back to 2011, when this Chinese company built the world’s largest football school in Guangdong, as certified by the Guinness Book of Records in 2015. At this school, which has 50 fields of soccer, the training is directed exclusively by coaches appointed by Real Madrid.