Football isn’t new to China, with origins of the game, then known as ‘Kickball’ being traced back over 2000 years. Although probably not the first place you associate with ‘The Beautiful Game’, recent government initiatives and support from football mad President Xi Jinping means the sport is becoming big business. In the past year Chinese Super League clubs have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on buying international players in an effort to boost the country’s sporting reputation and get a step closer to their goal of hosting a World Cup.

Chris Steele-Perkins visited the training academies for tomorrow’s future football stars, from Kindergarten’s equipped with mini Astroturf pitches and teams of football coaches, expensive private schools specialising in football, financed by some of China’s biggest construction companies. To the Dream of Dragons female football team made up of deaf students from the Zhan Jiang Special Education School, facing opposition from the school authorities who dismiss sport for disabled girls as a waste of time.

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