At the age of 10, Shi Ruiqi was emerging as a promising young soccer player. He was training with his school team in Shanghai for an hour every weekday, and he’d finally broken into the starting 11.

Then, he began third grade — and just like that, his soccer career was over. With the academic pressure at school ramping up, Shi quit training to focus on his studies.

Shi had become the latest victim of a phenomenon that China believes lies at the root of its struggles on the soccer field: the “12-year-old trap,” which refers to kids quitting the sport before their teens due to the intense competition they face at school.

China has ambitions of becoming a soccer powerhouse by 2050, but years of reforms have yet to lead to a sustained uptick in results on the field. The Chinese men’s national team currently sits bottom of its Asian qualifying group for the 2026 World Cup after a string of embarrassing defeats.

The poor run of results has sparked much soul-searching in China about its struggles to develop world-class players, and led to renewed focus on the deficiencies in the country’s youth training system.

China has made a huge effort to get more children playing soccer in recent years, with the government pushing schools to teach the sport. In 2019, about 27,000 primary and middle schools in the country offered soccer training. By March this year, that figure had risen to 50,000, which means that tens of millions of students have the opportunity to play soccer on campus.

But all too often, children stop playing when they reach middle school — a time when the pressure to score high grades starts to ramp up in China. Parents often feel it’s pointless for their kids to devote time to soccer, given the slim chances of making it as a professional.

In 2018, the organizers of a youth tournament in Beijing noted the stark divide between its different age categories. There were 229 U8 and U9 teams participating in the event, but only 70 U13 and U15 teams.

In Chinese soccer circles, the idea that the “12-year-old trap” is fatally undermining the country’s youth development efforts has gained traction in recent months. Government officials have spoken at length about the need to combat the trap and convince more kids to keep playing soccer.

In October, the eastern city of Hangzhou attracted attention when it unveiled one of the country’s first projects designed specifically to address the “12-year-old trap,” setting up a Hangzhou Football College at Hangzhou Normal University.

The idea is that the college will provide children with a pathway to obtaining a higher education through soccer, meaning that families will no longer have to choose between education and sport. It’s an approach that several other cities, including Suzhou and Ganzhou in neighboring Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces, respectively, are also experimenting with.

But Hangzhou — one of 16 Chinese cities designated as soccer development pilot zones — is going further by expanding soccer programs across schools, making the sport part of the local high school entrance exam, and establishing a joined-up talent pipeline linking the city’s youth leagues, universities, and professional soccer clubs.

“The integration of middle schools, high schools, and colleges offers hope for solving the ‘12-year-old trap’ issue,” Wang Jianjun, deputy chairman of the Suzhou Football Association, told local media.

The central government is also placing greater focus on this area. In February, seven ministries jointly released a new policy promoting on-campus soccer education. In addition to requiring primary and secondary schools to include soccer in their physical education classes and after-school activities, it also pushes universities to strengthen their soccer training programs and offer elective soccer courses.

Whether these moves are enough to solve the 12-year-old trap remains to be seen. Zhang Yong, a coach and manager of a soccer training center in Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that the number of children playing at the club drops sharply after they reach fifth grade.

“There are cases where higher-grade students can’t find enough players to make a team at their school, so we would have to combine several schools to form a team,” he said.

The issue isn’t limited to soccer. Yang Yi, a well-known basketball commentator, has pointed out that China’s youth basketball teams perform well in international tournaments up to the age of 12, but they often struggle in the higher age groups due to the 12-year-old trap.

“This is because sports and academic education are separated in China,” he told local media.

But Zhang, who trains the soccer teams at several local schools, sees some signs of hope. China’s growing emphasis on physical education in schools appears to be paying off, he suggested, as the drive provides children with more opportunities to play sports.

“We can see that the emphasis on physical education is increasing,” he said. “Besides regular PE classes, there are also alternative sports classes for football, basketball, and volleyball.”

(Header image: Children play in a soccer game organized by a municipal league for primary and secondary school students in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, March 9, 2023. VCG)