Catch a shooting star

"We want to get closer to the fans, not only in Shanghai but the whole country. And we want them to be more engaged in our culture," Sergi Torrents, general manager of La Liga in China, tells the China Daily in an interview.

Over the past few years, the booming Chinese Super League has attracted many top-level international footballers, helping to pull Chinese football out of a slump. And now the promising outlook in China is making Torrents more confident that they will win over more fans of La Liga.

"The growth of the Chinese Super League is unstoppable," he says. "I've been living in China since 2004, and of course the quality of local competition and people's interest in football over the past decade have become much higher.

"For people everywhere, whether they are in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, their home teams are of course local. People here in Shanghai may support Shenhua or SIPG, but we want their second teams to come from Spain."

As well as promoting La Liga, Torrents' organization is also attempting to foster a more positive atmosphere for football to develop in China as a whole. And running training camps is one of the most effective ways to influence future generations over the long term.

Under the framework of La Liga Club, academies were set up in Shanghai and Beijing in 2017 to nurture talented players aged between 4 and 15 years old using coaches from the Spanish league and assistants from China.

Schools in eastern Anhui province will be included in the training program this year and the project will be rolled out to other provinces in China in the near future, Torrents says.

But for many Chinese fans, the Premier League in England probably remains their first choice when it comes to domestic football leagues in Europe.

And this fact is reflected in their online followings. For example, the official Sina Weibo account of FC Barcelona had 5.72 million followers by the end of 2017, compared to Real Madrid's 2.99 million. By contrast, Manchester United from the Premier League had 9.21 million followers, while Manchester City had 8.23 million. But the Spanish duo still had more followers than many other English heavyweights like Chelsea and Liverpool.

And Torrents has high hopes for developing the popularity of Spanish teams.

"The English Premier League moved into the Asian market 15 to 20 years ago," Torrents says. "We may have joined the market later, but we are catching up very quickly. The incredible fan base of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona is at a different level because there are no other ties quite like El Clasico anywhere else."