A seventh-grader at Suzhou Science and Technology City Foreign Language School has been named the only player from Suzhou selected to the elite U13 squad of the La Liga Shanghai Football Academy in 2026, capping a rise that has already produced a national youth reserve-talent selection and two city-level best-player awards, the school reported. He Juncheng of the school’s middle-school Class 5, Grade 7, is also a national gold medalist in mathematics and a first-prize winner in a national student calligraphy competition — a combination the school says is no accident, but the product of a deliberate system.
The school’s report traces He’s football start to a kindergarten movement class, where he tried kicking a ball, found it fun, and never stopped. Eight years of high-intensity training later, the 13-year-old plays as a forward and has collected the Mayor’s Cup and District Mayor’s Cup “best player” honors, was one of only two players from the Suzhou New District selected in 2024 as high-level reserve talent for a national football development key city, and earned his 2026 La Liga academy spot as Suzhou’s sole representative.
The Comeback That Showed His Nerve
His composure under pressure surfaced this past summer at the Gusu Evening News Cup. With his team trailing 1-0 at halftime, He won a penalty in the second half, converted it himself, then set up a teammate for another goal to complete the comeback, according to the school. He shares the journey with a teammate who has played alongside him since kindergarten, and the two grew up together in the school’s program.
Asked how he keeps training and schoolwork from colliding, He described a strict separation: finish homework at school, commit fully to training without thinking about study, then focus on reading without thinking about training. The school says that discipline has let sport act as a counterweight rather than a distraction — fatigue from long hours at the desk dissipates in running on the pitch, and the resilience built on the field carries into junior-high academics.
More Than a Footballer: Math Gold and Calligraphy Ink
The same focus that wins penalties shows up at the desk and the brush. He’s list includes a national gold award in the Kangaroo mathematics competition, a level-7 certificate in soft-pen calligraphy, and a first prize in the national painting and calligraphy competition for primary and secondary students, the school reported. The contrast is the point: the roar of cleats on turf and the faint sound of a brush on rice paper coexist in one student’s day.
The System Behind One Standout Player
School officials say He’s success is not a solo act. When he moved from primary to middle school, the training environment expanded — bigger pitches, richer content, more teammates who love the game, and coaches who combine theory with one-on-one technical work on movement and dribbling. His 20-player Grade 7 U13 ladder squad splits into small groups for scrimmages and regularly plays cross-grade matches against eighth- and ninth-graders to absorb experience.
Behind that is the middle school’s eight-teacher physical education department, covering football, basketball, volleyball, martial arts and cheerleading, with staff that include district teaching award winners, master’s graduates in sports training, and coaches holding national first-class referee and second-class athlete certifications, the school said. The group has won provincial, municipal and district teaching competition first prizes, coached students to fourth place at city level in pickleball and the junior-high championship in the 2026 Suzhou New District middle-school basketball tournament, and won the 2026 district workers’ basketball league themselves.
As a designated national youth campus football characteristic school, the school has built a pipeline that runs from popularization through interest groups, ladder teams and the school squad, with football embedded in required physical education. He’s U13 ladder team is coached by staff including holders of UEFA A-level coaching licenses. The school stresses an “academics first, scientific training” rule — no sacrificing classroom time for results — and uses structured training schedules to balance study and sport.
Why the School Says Football Is Not a ‘Side Subject’
In its report, the school answers the anxiety many parents hold: that time on the pitch steals energy from the desk. The school’s position is that real education finds a fulcrum rather than making cuts. Football, it argues, shapes character — learning to judge fast-changing situations, to hold on when the score is against you, to cooperate within a team. He himself put it that the teamwork and communication football taught him transfer directly into daily study and life.
The school says it does not expect every graduate to become a professional player. What it aims to produce, it reported, are complete people with both the strength to win respectably and the dignity to lose well. He, for his part, has an open invitation for classmates: anyone who loves football is welcome to join the school team.
What remains open is how far the pathway can carry him. The 2026 La Liga academy selection places him on a professional-track ladder, but the school’s report records no timeline beyond that — no contract, no transfer, no next tournament date — only continued training inside a system designed so that the football and the calligraphy never have to choose between each other.
