Abstract:The tournament has become the "birthplace of dreams" for generations of young football enthusiasts in Shanghai to chase the ball and run and show their style.
On June 30, the 2024 39th "Harbour-SAIC" Cup Xinmin Evening News Summer Middle School Football Match and National Exchange Tournament were officially launched. As the image ambassador, Shanghai Port Football Club's first-team player Vargas appeared at the ceremony.
The event expands the "circle of friends"
The event was jointly sponsored by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, the Shanghai Municipal Sports Bureau, and the Xinmin Evening News. As the oldest, most well-known and largest youth amateur football tournament in Shanghai, the Wanbao Cup has become the "dream birthplace" for generations of young football enthusiasts in Shanghai since its first establishment in 1986, and has been held for 39 consecutive sessions.
This year's Wanbao Cup will be fully launched in July, and the Shanghai competition area will start the "opening game", and the city's junior and senior high school students will participate in the preliminaries through online registration. This year, the Shanghai competition preliminaries set up seven competition areas - Pudong New Area Competition, Huangpu Competition, Jing'an Competition, Putuo Competition, Minhang Competition, Songjiang Competition Area and Lingang Competition, aiming to concentrate high-quality resources and competition strength to provide better experience for participating students. Among them, the Lingang Division, as a new competition area that has recently "joined" the Evening News Cup camp, is regarded as an important attempt to strengthen regional cultural and sports and various exchanges.
Representatives from Nantong, Taizhou, Huangshan, Kashgar, Shigatse and the host Shanghai region presented their exclusive jerseys. Photo courtesy of the organizer
Since 2021, the Wanbao Cup has successively entered the Yangtze River Delta region, Xinjiang Kashgar Division, and ushered in the Tibet Shigatse region team in last year's national exchange competition. This year, Jiangsu Nantong Division joined the "Yangtze River Delta Division" camp, realizing the linkage of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.
In August, after the end of the national divisional competition, the Evening News Cup National Exchange Competition will be held, and the champion teams of the six major divisions will compete in the same field to finally determine the champion of the national exchange competition of the junior and senior high school groups. On this basis, this year's national exchange tournament will usher in the women's competition for the first time, and the women's teams from Kashgar, Xinjiang and Shigatse, Tibet, will come to Shanghai to compete with the women's football teams in Shanghai.
"Old friends" call "new friends"
In recent years, with the full support of Shanghai Port Football Club, players such as Wu Lei, Oscar, Yan Junling, Wang Shenchao, Li Shenglong and other players have served as image ambassadors, and they have actively appeared in the evening news cup, bringing the power of role models to young football in Shanghai. This year, under Wu Lei's enthusiastic "invitation", the "baton" of the image ambassador was passed to Vargas, an Argentine foreign player from the Harbour Club, who also followed the local customs and sent encouragement to everyone in Shanghainese.
Student journalists interview ambassador Vargas on site. Photo courtesy of the organizer
Speaking of Vargas's fate with China and the seaport, it is naturally inseparable from Wu Lei's "threading the needle". In the 2020 season of La Liga, the two "Wuba connected", and Vargas assisted Wu Lei and broke through the goal of La Liga giants Barcelona. In 2022, Wu Lei returned to his parent club Shanghai Port, and soon after, Vargas followed in his footsteps and joined along.
At the launching ceremony, Vargas received the commemorative plaque of "Image Ambassador", he said: "I am very happy to be the image ambassador of the Wanbao Cup, and I came to the scene today to see such young people who love football, which reminds me of my motherland, where the football atmosphere is as strong as Shanghai." At the same time, he also sent a message to the players participating in the Evening Cup: "You are lucky to have such a good venue and facilities, I hope you can enjoy the joy of football." ”
Public welfare has more "new highlights"
With the in-depth participation of Shanghai Harbour Football Club and its strategic partner SAIC as co-organizers, the "Haigang-SAIC" Cup Xinmin Evening News Summer Middle School Football Match has been renewed for a long time. Not only deeply implement the integrated development strategy of the Yangtze River Delta, but also under the guidance of the national strategy of "cultural rejuvenation of Xinjiang", the Wanbao Cup has actively organized competitions throughout the country, and has given full play to the public welfare attributes of the event, carried out public welfare actions such as football classes and equipment delivery in various competition areas, and carried out a series of football and cultural exchange activities during the national exchange competition.
The new tournament was officially launched. Photo courtesy of the organizer
In the past few years, when the Wanbao Cup was held in Kashgar, Xinjiang, it has sent football equipment to local students many times and set up training courses. This year, the Wanbao Cup will upgrade the Xinjiang Kashgar Public Welfare Program, with Cheng Yaodong, Youth Training Director of Shanghai Port Football Club, as the "Public Welfare Ambassador", going to Kashgar to deliver football training courses to the participating teams. The Harbour Club plans to set up a youth training base in Kashgar.
According to the Harbour Club, the best players of this year's Evening Cup will go to the Oriental Luzhou Training Base as a member of the Harbour "Young Eagle Program" to receive professional guidance from the youth coaches of the Harbour Football Club. The practice of a series of public welfare actions will further open up the road to professional football for young people who love football.
As an important part of the competition, the training of student journalists created by the Wanbao Cup over the years has always been the cradle for Shanghai students to nurture news ideals. This year's student journalist corps will be further expanded, with nearly 200 students from 16 districts participating in the program, learning to improve their professional skills and documenting youth sports events through three special classes: news writing, sports photography and video editing.
The header photo shows Vargas taking a group photo with the young players. Photo courtesy of the organizer