The school's president, Yilamu, talks about some of the school's difficult early years and its mission, "to develop more young talented players and send them to national teams". Photo is taken on August 3, 2011. [Photo/China Daily]

'Reason we are here'

Behind the huge local progress, however, Xinjiang soccer is caught between the absence of a local professional club - the Sport Lottery club lost its funding and stopped playing this year - and the increasing number of talented youths.

The students benefit from the subsidy from the Soong Ching Ling Foundation, yet they have to pay 5,800 yuan ($907) every year to cover tuition and board, a huge economic burden for the majority. The annual income of Hirali's family is 12,000 yuan, which comes mainly from selling the cotton they grow.

"It is only one-third the expense of schools in other, developed provinces, but it still shuts the door to many soccer talents," said Tewangu, 57, a coach in the school who played on the Xinjiang soccer team in 1977.

The school also received some business sponsorships, but Yilamu said the expenses of traveling to play across the country takes up almost his entire budget.

For Hirali and other students at the school, the only key to success is to exert all their strength to play well in all the matches, to attract the attention of professional clubs and sign contracts, as Bali and Metjon did.

"We are taught other subjects like mathematics, but we know clearly the only reason we are here," Hirali said. "I have to feed our family in the future."

Hamit, 17, another talented player in the school, suffers from knee pain but sticks to the four-hour daily training. He wants to play for the Hangzhou Green Town Football Club, a Super League club in eastern China's Zhejiang province. It recently sent him an unofficial training invitation.

"The mission of Xinjiang soccer now is to develop more young talented players and send them to national teams," Yilamu said.

"It is true that professional soccer clubs are showing increasing interest in signing up the boys in our school. But the money they are willing to offer is quite low."

Yilamu said a rich professional soccer club recently offered him 50,000 yuan annually in return for two players from the school every year. Yilamu declined.

In 2008, the autonomous region invested 40 million yuan to build a new training base in Urumqi. In October, Xinjiang Soong Ching Ling Football School will move to the base, which contains three fields, a gymnasium, a medical treatment room and an indoor training area.

According to an official plan released in December, Xinjiang will invest 50 million yuan every year to establish 100 soccer schools in the next decade.