China’s youth are kung fu fighting to improve their football ranking – in pictures

The Shaolin football training base — set up last year near the home of China’s fighting monks — has ambitions to use traditional martial arts techniques to produce elite football players for Team Dragon. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

Students standing in formation before wushu practice at the Tagou martial arts school in Dengfeng, China, on October 20, 2016. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

Some 1,500 students from the vast Tagou martial arts school, a few kilometres from the cradle of Chinese kung fu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan province, have signed up for its new football programme. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

The vast Tagou martial arts school has 35,000 fee-paying boarders, who live in spartan conditions and are put through a rigorous training regime. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

Each child who signs up for the soccer programme practises for several hours every day and the school has signed a deal with a British firm to import coaches. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

Students practise wushu at the Tagou martial arts school in Dengfeng, China, on October 20, 2016. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

The training base has drawn comparisons with the hit 2001 Hong Kong film ‘Shaolin Soccer’, which is about a ragtag band of out-of-shape martial artists who defy the odds to storm to victory in a football tournament. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

The film’s heroes play in yellow monks’ robes, flying through the air, carrying out dazzling dives and overhead kicks of tornado-like power and winning one game 40-0. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

One student admitted he still could not do ‘the flying ... and those sort of awesome things’ like the movie, but he expressed confidence he will one day be able to do spinning kicks and bicycle kicks. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

But despite their years of kung fu training, the students’ football skills were still a work in progress, school staff admitted. Nicolas Asfouri / Agence France-Presse

A football training base at the Tagou martial arts school in Dengfeng, China, has drawn comparisons with the hit 2001 Hong Kong film Shaolin Soccer, which is about a ragtag band of out-of-shape martial artists who defy the odds to storm to victory in a football tournament.