Soccer News Daily has taken a detailed look at the youth development work at Zhejiang FC, noting that by 2026 the club's academy will have developed more than 1,100 players, with nearly 300 progressing into the professional leagues across the Chinese Super League, China League One and China League Two, and 182 selected for national-team setups at various levels.
As the only Chinese Super League club in Zhejiang province, Zhejiang FC sees youth development as a responsibility it cannot avoid. Club officials have taken part in provincial and municipal football meetings and worked proactively with authorities at different levels. For example, during the preliminary stage of the National Games for the three major ball sports, the club not only took on the task of fielding Zhejiang's U18 representative team, but also reinforced the U16 side with four outstanding players.
Zhejiang FC is a professional club with 28 years of history and a 25-year youth-development tradition. Its academy system began during the club's time in the second tier in 2001 and has gone through the initial establishment of the youth structure, the founding of a football school, the arrival of Takeshi Okada, the formation of a Japanese-style academy model and the release of its own youth-development guidelines. Youth development has remained the foundation and lifeblood of the club.
By 2026, Zhejiang FC's academy had developed more than 1,100 players, with nearly 300 reaching the top three professional divisions and 182 entering national-team squads at different age levels. In recent years, the most prominent products have been current internationals Zhang Yuning, Cheng Jin, Wang Yudong and Liu Haofan. At the same time, 73 players developed by Zhejiang FC are playing for first teams in the three professional tiers, while more than 100 others are involved in the Wu-Yue Cup Zhejiang Provincial City Football League as coaches, players, referees, team managers and competition organizers.
From its earlier influence on local football culture through long-term patient work, Zhejiang FC has now moved toward a more proactive and systematic model of cooperation across multiple levels in its region. The club's thinking can be summed up in one idea: it must not stand still, but instead, in light of the current football environment and the times, restart youth-development reform with a reset mindset and a positive attitude.
If Zhejiang FC had long been focused on refining its academy and exploring how to turn brand value into commercial value, then after the introduction of full state-backed ownership, the club's management has faced a bigger question: how to use its brand strength and professional expertise to fulfill greater social responsibility and create higher social value.
With a mature youth system and extensive professional experience, Zhejiang FC is confident in producing more outstanding players. But the club also believes that high-level player production depends on strong regional support and a broad talent pool, which requires joint efforts from local government and relevant authorities. In the club's view, only in this way can youth development be done well, because it is a long-term, systematic project.
Among the latest group of academy players born in 2005 and 2006 to enter the professional pathway, 26 out of a 38-man National Games registration list have already made it into professional leagues, giving that age group a professional success rate of 68 percent. The club says this remarkable figure is not only a record for Zhejiang FC's academy, but also rare by international standards.
However, repeated visits to the club's Zhongtai base show that Zhejiang FC's academy staff are not satisfied with current conversion rates or competition results. Instead, they continue to ask deeper questions such as why the players they develop seem short of competitiveness at AFC Champions League level, and why the gap between their players and Japanese players widens as they move up the age ladder after appearing similar in childhood.
Those reflections have become the internal driver of reform. After more than a decade of fully introducing Japanese youth-development resources and systems and working closely with Takeshi Okada's team, Zhejiang FC became the first football club in China to have its own youth-development guideline in December 2021. The document was jointly compiled by Chinese and Japanese academy directors, combining the craftsmanship associated with the Japanese team and the Chinese side's own research and effort. Only internal coaches at Zhejiang FC can access this core document online, while partner organizations receive both theory-based and practical training arranged by the club.
Just as the guideline continues to be refined and updated, the Chinese-Japanese academy model has also kept improving. The partnership between Zhejiang FC and FC Imabari has now entered a mature phase. Compared with the early period, when youth teams were led across the board by Japanese head coaches with Chinese assistants, more Chinese coaches are now taking the lead.
Before this year, Feng Yang of the U15s was the only Chinese head coach in the academy. In February, the club promoted Tan Yang and Li Wei, who took charge of the U20 and U16 teams respectively. The club said that after four years of mentoring from Japanese coaches and regular study visits to Japan, the time had come to give these young Chinese coaches more room to lead. As the club put it, the purpose of learning from Japanese coaches is to develop its own coaching force.
The strengthening of the Chinese side does not mean a reduced role for the Japanese staff. Zhejiang FC's academy department still employs six Japanese staff members. Kentaro Anzai serves as head of the academy medical group, while newly appointed technical adviser Kunihiko Shindo is mainly responsible for improving the professional standards of academy coaches through lectures and on-site guidance, and for evaluating coaches across all age groups.
Shindo, 74, is one of the club's most high-profile additions this year. He is a top-level Japanese coach and instructor who previously led the Japan Football Association's coach education programme. Under the new quality-control evaluation system for coaches led by Shindo, results are not the only focus. Talent development, professional competence and management ability are all given particular importance.
All this shows that although the club is committed to reform with a reset mindset, it is not trying to tear down and rebuild its existing academy structure from scratch. Instead, it is pushing forward across technical work, management, logistics, medical services and youth-development mechanisms with higher internal demands and stronger standards for talent development. Its academy philosophy is to build a consistent guidance system based on a long-term perspective, use football to shape players' character and develop players according to world-level standards.
On the morning of June 6, AFC Deputy Technical Director Ono Tsuyoshi and Youth Committee member Mitsuta Tomoki arrived in Hangzhou to carry out an on-site assessment of Zhejiang FC's bid for AFC Three-Star Elite Youth Academy status. If Zhejiang FC secures the highest-level AFC certification, it could become the first club in China to be recognized as an AFC Three-Star Elite Youth Academy.
On the same day, Zhejiang FC's partner club FC Imabari received that certification, joining a group of 10 institutions that includes Qatar's Aspire Academy, Vietnam's PVF Football Academy and South Korea's Jeonbuk Hyundai.
According to the report, the certification system is part of the AFC Elite Youth Scheme and requires strict reviews across 20 areas, including the training system, player-development environment, educational structure, infrastructure and professional staffing. At present, only the Jiangsu Taihu women's youth academy in China has been rated as an AFC Two-Star Elite Youth Academy.
For Zhejiang FC, competing for the authority and prestige of AFC Three-Star Elite Youth Academy status is significant above all because it represents a new development opportunity for its youth system. Club officials are clear-eyed in their assessment, saying that measured against the AFC's standards, they have only just met the threshold. The next steps, and the need to learn from Asia's top peers, are now much clearer.
Another opportunity lies in the transformation of its football school model. Founded in 2004, the Zhejiang Greentown Football School is not only one of the objects of the AFC inspection, but is also facing its own chance for upgrading. At present, the club has linked its primary-school age academy teams with strong local educational resources in Quzhou and has reached a cooperation agreement with Hangzhou Normal University, but an effective mechanism for the key integrated "3+4" pathway has not yet been formed.
Next, the club will continue to push forward the application and transition toward a new-type football school. In addition to maintaining an open and transparent pathway for future professional players, the school aims to provide players and parents with educational security as a safety net. That matters not only for those who may never reach the top of the football pyramid, but also for the willingness of many children across Zhejiang and even the country to commit to football and follow the Zhejiang FC academy route.
As five-tier youth-development centres are being rolled out nationwide, Zhejiang FC says it is willing to take part with an open, proactive and collaborative approach, whether by supplying talent to national and regional youth centres or by bringing its core strengths to provincial, city and county-level centres through the integration of Chinese and Japanese academy methods, the combination of advantages, and the continued improvement and wider export of its youth-development philosophy and practice.