我之前说过，包括我自己在内的很多人都曾嘲笑足球运动员没那么聪明。人们总是认为只有和足球联系起来的时候，球员们的头脑才能派得上用场，他们并不经常思考问题。但事实并非如此，我们只需要听听球员们所说的话，就可以知道他们的头脑其实非常灵活。
真正让我吃惊的是，在中国，学术教育和足球教育之间的联系似乎并不真的存在。对于很多家长来说，将足球作为他们孩子未来的职业是不可以接受的。虽然随着越来越多的资金开始投入到这项运动之中，家长们的态度也有所改变，但让人难以理解的是，这里所建立的所谓“足球学校”却只有一些基础的设施，他们只关注足球，而忽略了其他方面的教育。
在中国似乎有这样一个不成文的规定，如果你是一个职业球员，足球就是你的唯一职责，那些可以让你增加收入或是提高你的生活能力的技能被看做是不必要的。但事实上这是目光极为短浅的做法，尤其是在中国大力鼓励年轻人参与足球运动的背景下。试想一下，如果这些人不为自己升级，那么会发生什么？这里我们拿英格兰来做一个对比。英格兰的人口比中国少得多，但这里的职业足球俱乐部比中国多很多，这里有成千上万的前职业球员，但激烈的竞争意味着这些球员很难从一线队脱颖而出，有些人进入了成年队却从未得到在一线队出场的机会。或许十年之后，中国也会有成千上万人进入足球学校但却没能成为职业球员，那么他们在之后的人生该做什么？
职业球员和社会中的其他人一样，他们需要接受教育，需要其他生活技能。如果他们无法成为职业球员，或是由于年龄和伤病导致职业生涯时间很短，这些技能可以帮助他们为自己准备B计划。反之，如果他们年纪轻轻就进入足球世界，他们对其他领域一无所知，这样他们对自己、家人和社会的价值就会相对较低，因此他们必须为自己退役之后的生活做打算。当然，我们也看到很多前职业球员在退役后从事电视解说行业，但并不是每个人都可以靠脸吃饭，为某品牌代言，事实上这些人只占到所有球员的百分之一左右。
那么，在这方面中国应该向其他国家学些什么？这里我还是用英格兰为例，因为这也是欧洲大多数地区的情况。如果你是一位16岁的孩子，和英格兰的一支职业球队签约，俱乐部意识到他们有义务培养你的足球技巧，但同时他们也会帮助你应付场下的生活。因此，这些球员不仅会每天训练和进行对抗性的比赛，他们也会去大学，在课堂上接受教育。显然，他们的教育重点在两个方面：体育技能和生活技能。
事实上这些球员只是有成为职业足球运动员的潜力，但他们是按照普通运动员的方式在训练，他们会学习关于健身、营养和运动管理等很多方面的知识。这样即使他们日后没有走足球这条道路，他们还是有机会在其他运动领域有所突破。这还可以帮助这些孩子在日后成为一名教练(当然不仅仅局限于足球领域)，或是处理一些关于足球以及其他体育俱乐部的商业问题。一支球队需要有商业头脑的人才帮助他们运营场外的事务，比如为球队带来更多赞助商或是其他让球队盈利的方法， 既然如此，为什么不应该让年轻人了解一下这方面的知识呢？
如果这些年轻人在日后想成为教练，他们除了需要掌握球技之外，也要了解基本的教学手段。这是一种双赢的做法，如果球员们在场上无法帮助球队，那么球队也可以从场下得到相应的回报。即便这些球员中有人足够出色并成为了职业球员，他们也迟早会面对挂靴退役的那一天。等到那个时候，他们小时候学到的知识和经验就会变得尤为重要，因为这在日后可以给他们更多人生选择。
现在这就是一个简单的数学问题了。如果我们创立了足够多的足球学校，成千上万的孩子来这里踢球，但最终只会有很少一部分人可以成为出色的球员。问题是那些不够出色，被职业球队拒绝的人该怎么办？
这又是一个如何看待足球和教育的问题。选择走上职业足球这条道路会阻碍你拿到高学历吗？球员们究竟需不需要这些学历呢？球员们是不是应该像很多名人一样，在他们功成身退之后在选择接受荣誉学位？答案很简单，选择成为职业球员并不能阻止你接受学术方面的教育，举一个例子。
邓肯-沃特莫尔(Duncan Watmore)是一个21岁的中场球员，目前在英超的桑德兰踢球。多亏桑德兰对他的发掘，否则这位天才很可能就此被埋没。事实上，沃特莫尔曾是曼联青训营中的一员，但12岁的时候，他被告知不够出色，无法继续留在球队。但他在当地的一支球队继续踢球并且像其他英格兰的孩子一样正常上学，他希望接受最好的教育，同时成为一名职业球员，他希望在两个领域都能有所建树。
(图)沃特莫尔既是一位职业球员，也是一名“学霸”
18岁的时候，他被桑德兰签下，那时他也已经开始攻读自己的学位，他把两方面处理得都很好。去年他被选为英超年度最佳U21球员，并且得到了为英格兰U21出场的机会。桑德兰主帅表示，当球队前往客场比赛的时候，球队的其他人都在听音乐玩手机，只有沃特莫尔在车上看着课本。
一周之前，沃特莫尔拿到了经济与工商管理学的一等学位(first-class degree)。他坦承训练之余他花了很长时间，有的时候甚至要学到深夜，为了训练，他不得不依靠在线课程来赶上教学进度。但能拿到一等学位让他感到非常骄傲，因为他是第二个完成这一成就的英超球员。他不仅为桑德兰进了球，还让人们意识到知识和足球是可以兼得的，只是这需要球员付出更多的努力和注意力。对于那些在中国认为足球和教育应该分开，无法兼得的人们，他们应该把沃特莫尔当成最好的典范，激励他们在这方面做得更好。
2015年12月14日
于中国上海
BALANCING THE LOVE OF FOOTBALL AND A GOOD EDUCATION
I have said before that many people, including myself joke about football players not being very clever; there is always this perception that footballers heads are only useful when connecting with a football and not for thinking and being smart. In reality, this is not true as we only need to listen to many players speak and clearly they are very switched on.
What always amazes me in China is that the link between academic education and football does not really exist. I understand that perhaps for many parents, having their sons (and recently daughters) play football as a profession was considered unacceptable, although with the money now coming into the game, this attitude is changing, but what is more incomprehensible is that when a "football school" is established here, this includes only the basic requirements of schooling and the main focus is football.
There seems to be an assumption in China that if you are a footballer, that’s the only job you will ever do, so learning other skills that may provide an income or improve a persons life skills are unnecessary; this is very short sighted especially as the country is now trying to "process" more young players in order to find the best ones. What will happen to all those who don’t make the grade? Using England as a comparison, from such a small country with a fraction of China’s population, but far more professional football clubs, there are tens of thousands of ex-footballers in the country, some never made it through the youth system and some were signed and never made the first team because the competition was so great. In ten years time, China will have hundreds of thousands of men and woman who went to football school and didn’t make it into a team, what will they all do afterwards?
A footballer is like any other person, they need life skills, an education and they need a plan B for the time when they either cannot get into a professional team, or can no longer play at a professional level due to age or injury. If they are only ever exposed to the world of football from an early age, they will know nothing else and their value to themselves, their families and the community will be relatively low; they need to prepare for their life after football. Of course we all see some of ex-players working as presenters on TV, and a few really famous ones can earn money as the face of some consumer brands, but these people are a fraction of one percent of the footballing population.
So what can China learn from other countries in this area? I am going to use England again, but in much of Europe, a similar approach is adopted. If you are a 16-year old youth player signed by any professional club in England, the club recognises that it has a responsibility to develop your footballing skills, but also must help prepare you for life off the pitch. To do this, these players not only train and play practice and competitive matches regularly, but they also go to college and are taught in class as the club. There are typically two areas that their education focuses on; sports coaching and management, and life skill’s.
These young people are not just potential professional football players, they are trained athletes, and if they cannot work in football in the future, they could potentially work in another sport, so they learn many different aspects of fitness, nutrition and sports management. If we think about these subject areas they make sense because youth players can chose to become coaches for any sport including football, but they can also make a decision to work on the business side of a football club or any other sports club. Football clubs need business minded people to work off the pitch to run the business, to bring in sponsorship, to develop other income streams, and why not use young people who understand and really care about football to do this?
If the young player likes to teach others, they still need to have the basic teaching skills as well as the technical skills in the future. Their clubs can leverage these youth players off the pitch, even if they cannot use them on the pitch; it’s a win-win solution. Even for those youth players who are good enough and go onto play professionally, there will come a time when they must hang up their boots and retire. This prior knowledge and experience they gain when they are young is very important for them, as they get older as it gives them greater choices.
At this time the focus is very simply a numbers game; if we create thousands of football schools coaching hundreds of thousands of young people to play football, we should get a few thousand reasonably good footballers as a result! The problem is the hundreds of thousands that are not quite good enough, what happens to them when they are rejected?
Here is another thought regarding footballers and education. Does choosing or wanting to be professional footballers prevent anyone from gaining a good quality degree, whether they actually need it or not. Are footballers clever enough to pass a degree, or should they wait until they receive an honorary one if they become famous, like many famous names have? The simple answer is that it shouldn’t stop anyone who is focused and determined to do it, and here is an example.
Duncan Watmore is a 21 year old striker who plays for the EPL club Sunderland, he is a very good talent who may have been lost if he wasn’t rediscovered by his current club. Duncan was part of the Manchester United academy until the age of 12 when he was told he wasn’t good enough to remain within it and was cut from the list. He carried on playing football locally and studying like any other normal English kid, but his goal was always to get the best education and to play professional football; he wanted the best of both worlds.
At 18 he was signed by Sunderland, but had already started studying for his degree, so he carried on doing both. Last year he was awarded the EPL U21 player of the year award and played in the England U21 team. The Sunderland coaches commented that is was strange to see all the squad on the bus travelling to a match listening to music and playing on their phones, but Duncan was at the front of the bus with his textbooks studying.
A week ago Duncan was presented with a first-class degree (the highest an English university can award) in Economics and Business Management. He said that it took a great deal of time after training and into the night, and he had to catch up on lectures online, but he was very proud to be only the second EPL player to have ever been awarded a first-class degree. Not only does he score goals for Sunderland, Duncan clearly recognises that the value of education and the love of the beautiful game can be combined; it just requires effort and focus. Let him be an inspiration to all of us, and to those in China who see football and education as two distinct choices and not one joyous combination.
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天下足球
