Promising Footballers Grow
The DPRK players won the gold medal in the U-16 Asian Football Confederation Championship held in Uzbekistan from October 24 to November 7 last year. The news made the officials and instructors of the Pothonggang District Juvenile Sports School in Pyongyang feel greater joy than others, for some of the footballers were graduates of the school. Forward Jo Kwang who got four goals in the championship, goalkeeper An Kang Chol who contributed to his team’s success with excellent judgment, quick action and set teeth, and quarterback Pak Myong Song who drew the attention of football experts as a skilled dribbler and scorer—all these come from the school.
In recent years, the school has determinedly striven to produce many talented footballers in accordance with the daily increasing public interest in football. A primary effort was put into selecting the recruits. The officials and instructors visited primary and secondary schools in the district to select recruits on the basis of concrete study of physical fitness and intellectual faculties of the pupils aspiring to be footballers.
The instructors put the training of the pupils on a scientific basis to enable them to master correct basic techniques in their early years and led them to improve their physical strength steadily.
The football instructors Pak Chan Sik and Kim Chol Ho, in particular, developed new training methods to suit their charges’ ages and psychological peculiarities, thus enabling the pupils to become good players with high speed, fortitude and smart dribbling and shooting techniques in a short time.
The school also helped the pupils further improve their abilities by placing emphasis on instruction based on multimedia data on the trend in the development of the world football techniques and books on sports science. Then it organized many matches with superior teams to make the pupils foster courage and enrich their experience in competition.
Their strenuous efforts bore fruit. The football team (male) of the school won the event of football at the 45th national juvenile sports schools’ games held in 2008. Since then they have never failed to win the games year after year.
Many graduates of the school play an important role in famous sports teams like the April 25 Sports Team, the Rimyongsu Sports Team and the Pyongyang Sports Team, and some of them, as members of the national team, distinguished themselves at many international games.
Well aware of the importance of their duty in developing the football of the country, the officials and instructors of the school are now working devotedly to produce more promising footballers.
Han Yu Jong
fonte: Korea Today