Premier League coaches develop skills of Chinese PE teachers and coaches, bolstering people-to-people exchanges.  

It was a regular football match day in Swansea, Wales, in 2018. Lu Yuzhou, a Chinese physical education (PE) teacher, was astonished by what he saw. A father had brought his blind son to the game. Lu had known about Britons’ deep love for football, but he hadn’t realized the extent of it until that moment.

He experienced this British passion for the game thanks to a three-month football exchange program between China and the U.K., an opportunity he got before joining another program called Premier Skills, a partnership between the Premier League and the British Council to train coaches and referees to support football-based educational projects in communities around the world.

Since its kick-off in China in 2009, the program has supported over 6,300 teachers, coaches, and referees across 30 cities, and has developed over 30 coach educators like Lu, contributing to a more engaging school football and physical education in China.

Warren Leat is Premier Skills’ football development manager in China. Before he came to China in 2016, he was a Premier League coach with decades of experience in coaching and coach education in many regions, including Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.

One of the key principles of Premier Skills is a positive learning environment, which is also honoured in the teacher training delivered by Leat. Assisted by translators, Leat and his colleagues discuss coaching philosophy, styles, and practical techniques with Chinese teachers. Besides classroom workshops, Leat takes the teachers to the pitch to practically demonstrate how to develop the children’s skills and confidence. At the end of each training, the participating teachers and coaches demonstrate what they learned through workshops and practical demonstration, and deliver football sessions to young people, under the guidance and support from the U.K. delivery team.

One challenge Leat observed was that Chinese football classes often have large student groups, leading to some children not being engaged. To illustrate how to increase student participation, he showed the Chinese teachers how to use “play tag” game in a warm-up exercise.

“This kind of activity is quite fun, chasing, engaging different movements, moving in different directions, which reflect the game of football,” Leat told China Today, adding that this also applies to other sports like basketball. This is how he encourages teachers to develop their own creative ways to engage students.

Premier Skills courses are built around several key approaches. One of them is summarized in the acronym SMILES, which stands for safe, maximum participation, inclusive learning, enjoyment, and success. Leat asks the teachers to develop football sessions that follow these principles.

Premier Skills also emphasizes communication as the key tool to enhance effective learning. For example, teachers are trained to use ways of communication that suit various learning styles, such as visual (e.g. using a board to draw situations during a game), auditory (e.g. explain and ask questions) or kinesthetic (e.g. physically demonstrate the activity).

As a coach with lots of international experience, Leat believes that football is a global language without cultural differences. “There’s no difference in the game, and there’s no difference in the way to teach the game,” he said. “Football is an excellent tool to enhance the education, personal development, and well-being of young people, as well as foster community cohesion.”

Participants of Premier League Primary Stars program in Guangzhou take a group photo in March 2025.

Dribbling Towards Progress 

First attending the program in 2017, Lu completed the course under Leat and became a coach educator in 2019. Inspired by the British coach’s optimistic attitude, openness to different ideas, and vivid body language, Lu applies what he learned in the program to coach Chinese students.

In Yongji, a city in Shanxi Province, north China, Lu helped train a football team of youngsters with mental disabilities. They had trouble understanding and following instructions. The coaches would repeat the instructions, over and over again, saying, for instance, to whom they should pass the ball, hoping they would remember, but often to little avail.

Then Lu stepped in. He would draw a picture and ask a student to think what he should do in such a scenario. He would also take the students to the field to enact the scenario, asking them to try different ways and find out for themselves which was the most effective. “The point is to encourage students to find the problem, analyze it, and ultimately solve it,” Lu said.

His efforts have paid off. Guided by new ideas, the team has won the national championship for children with mental disabilities three times. More importantly, football has helped many of the students who are autistic become more outgoing and positive.

Lu remembered a match they played with a team from Macao in 2018 followed by another one in 2021. When the two teams met again, the young players hugged each other, took photos together and exchanged souvenirs.

This is the kind of change Lu hopes to see. This is also what Premier Skills hopes to see as it has reached over 1.3 million young people in China over the years.

In 2020, Lu was promoted to director of the Campus Football Office at the Yongji Education and Sports Bureau. He organized the Premier Skills program in local schools and has trained 44 local teachers so far.

Extending positive learning experience for young people from football to other sports, and to support teachers and other educators to deliver high-quality physical education to primary school-age children, another program called Premier League Primary Stars was piloted in China between December 2023 and March 2025.

Zou Zhiyang, a research instructor at the Teacher Development Center of Zengcheng, a district in Guangzhou City in south China, participated in the program. He told China Today it helped him gain a better understanding of how to guide teachers in improving their educational and teaching abilities. He found that training sessions are more engaging after incorporating games and context to stimulate students’ interest in learning, making them enjoy the fun of sports.

“I have learned more advanced concepts and methods, like the SMILES principle. I will promote them in our district to enhance the quality of physical education and improve the level of educational research, in this way advancing the development of sports in our district,” he said.

China’s national football team hasn’t performed well on the international stage. Over recent years, China has intensified efforts to promote the development of football, starting with cultivating young players. In March 2024, a guideline for the reform and development of youth football was released to increase the number of youth footballers and establish a youth football competition and training system.

Premier Skills has not only improved Chinese teachers’ coaching skills but also deepened their mutual understanding with English coaches. In December 2023 and 2024, the program was delivered to the coaches from China’s Village Super League, a football festival in southwest China that has since become an international sensation.

Leat visited Rongjiang, the county in Guizhou Province, home to the Village Super League. He found that the league isn’t just about football. It’s a great example of community cohesion as people with different professions from the surrounding areas join in the matches. “It’s a similar experience to what the football culture would be like in the U.K.,” Leat told China Today.

Thanks to Premier Skills, Leat has had plenty of opportunities to visit various Chinese cities where he likes to try the local food, learn authentic Chinese, and appreciate the local cultures. When he went to Yongji on an inspection trip, Lu took him to eat his favorite dumplings, a local specialty, and told him the history behind a local temple.

Last May, the program invited Lu and other Chinese trainers and decision-makers to visit the headquarters of the Premier League, the Arsenal Football Club, the Millwall Football Club, and other prime football destinations. While the primary focus of the trip was to develop understanding of how Premier League Primary Stars was delivered in the U.K., he gained a deeper understanding of the role of U.K. football clubs in the community. For example, in underdeveloped areas, football clubs engage with young people to provide them with career options and positive pathways. 

Once a student of Leat, Lu has gradually become his colleague and friend. And there are countless such bonds between English and Chinese coaches fostered by Premier Skills, which are the very definition of people-to-people exchange between the two countries.

Football serves as a bridge connecting people from different continents. It’s not just about scoring goals or winning matches. It’s more about people interacting with each other, enjoying themselves, and forming bonds. Through the exchange brought by programs like Premier Skills, people can put aside their differences and find the incredible passion that Lu found on that match day in Swansea.