For VfL Wolfsburg, whose first team has always been a competent contender for Germany's Bundesliga title, they had dispatched a team of personnel to Weifang in advance to do the preparation work.
One unique thing they did was that they bought three dustbins and put ice and water in them. The players were asked to go into the dustbin, immerse their bodies in the icy water and hold on for one minute at the end of each game -- a method that has proven to be effective in helping players recover quickly from highly intensive games.
Kashima Antlers coach Kumagai Koji had always used the water break time - a short break arranged in the middle of each half of the game during which players of both sides were allowed to drink water so as to keep form in the hot weather - to comment on his players performance and give further instructions by drawing tactic sketches on a board..
In addition, the Japanese players were gathered together after each game to do yet another five minutes of stretching under the scorching sun heat.
AN INTEREST-ORIENTED APPROACH
With a totally different aim, the Ronaldo Academy, a franchise of football schools set up in 2015 by retired Brazilian footballer Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima to train kids aged between six and 18, doesn't see itself as an institution that trains professionals, but as one that nurtures young kids' interests in football and teaches them values they can carry on to their later life.
The Academy now has branches spreading over Brazil and the United States.
Paulo Swerts, who manages the Academy's business in China, said by doing so, they are focused not only on the professional part of the game, but also on the "leisure and learning experience" that football can provide.
"Through our academies, even though our goal is not to make professional football players, we will be able once we reach big numbers of students to allocate the students that are very gifted into professional football clubs like (Shandong) Luneng or Beijing Guoan and so on," Swerts said.
According to Swerts, by September, they will open schools not only in metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai, but also in provincial capitals including Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Zhangjiakou and Nanchang, and even in third-tier cities of Mianyang in the southwestern province of Sichuan province and Yiwu in the southeastern province of Zhejiang as well.
The Academy's business model is to forge cooperation with elementary and middle schools that have big numbers of students, build infrastructure in the cities, and bring in their coaches and the administrative structure to the schools that they partner with. "So the students come naturally to join our program," Swerts said.
Since the Academy currently doesn't have campuses of its own, they will also cooperate with football field owners in each of the cities to provide training fields.
Tuitions vary from city to city. "For third-tier cities, it would be something around 80 yuan (12 US dollars) per class," Swerts said, adding that the number of class will range from two to four per week to fit into the different realities of the partner schools.
