The Pitch, an educational challenge that invited 20 teams of students from across China to take on a dream position as the board of directors of a fictional British football team. Although intense and challenging, it enabled the students to experience the excitement, dynamism and creativity for which British education is known the world over.

Designed by Coventry University’s renowned Centre for the International Business of Sport and in association with Tottenham Hotspur football club, the tasks set for the teams are challenges that football clubs would normally face in a season

The competition culminated in a grand final in Beijing where four teams of finalists put their English skills to work in fast-paced presentations. As though that were not challenge enough, the judging panel consisted of international football management experts, including Fran Jones, Head of International Development at Tottenham Hotspur FC.

‘The Pitch is an innovative concept and it’s great that students will be able to interact with the Club while developing their business and management skills through football,’ he said.

The winning team, Hunan Yali Middle School, fought off stiff competition to win the trip of a life time: a visit to the UK, including a tour of the Tottenham Hotspur football stadium and visiting Coventry University to experience what it is like to study in the UK first hand.

Zhang Jiahua from the winning team said: ‘We were over the moon when the result was announced. The most important thing we’ve learnt is team work – individual talent can be developed significantly when everyone has their input.’

‘The challenge brought a special learning experience that married both education and sports management to the Chinese students,’ said Fran Jones, Head of International Development of Tottenham Hotspur.

The competition was led by the British Council in partnership with Coventry University and Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Firstly, congratulations to all the teams who participated in The Pitch, the teams who have participated in The Pitch have shown outstanding levels of hard work and have produced a fantastic catalogues of highly professional work.

The high quality of the work made picking the final teams all the more difficult for Prof. Chadwick! Unfortunately only four teams can join the final in live final in Beijing, which will take place on 7 November.

The teams are:

• Yali Go 4 Goal

• Wuhan Zhongyong (Useful)

• Fuzhou No.1 Middle School

• A.C.E.

Over the past two months 20 teams from across China have been faced with the numerous challenges that are faced by football clubs throughout a season as part of The Pitch Challenge. They have been asked to decide and justify courses of action and strategic developments of an imaginary club that they have been placed in control of.

Using a unique online learning platform the teams have been working closely with experts from Coventry University’s renowned sports management centre to help them make the decisions that count.

The live final will now take place in the Ling Long Pagoda at the Olympic Green. At the final the four teams will face their biggest challenge to date – presenting their ideas to our board of Pitch professionals and in front of a live audience of around 150 people.

The teams will be competing for the chance to win a one-week sporting trip of a lifetime to the UK.

That was intense!! During the first two tasks, groups asked a lot of questions, but for the final task there was almost complete silence. I sense that groups were working very, very hard in their attempts at ensuring that they make it to Beijing in November. I commend everyone for their hard work, diligence, application and commitment.

This task was essentially based around making a choice within a constraint of very limited information, but then explaining and justifying the choice that was made in whichever way that groups felt was appropriate.

The constraints on information, time and format is often something the groups will have to confront during their university lives, as well as in their working lives (in football, in sport, or elsewhere). As such, I hope that groups can reflect upon their experience of this task and consider what they have learned and how the challenges they have faced will help them deal with their work from herein.

Having looked at the submissions that groups have made, it is very clear that groups have produced very different types of report to those pieces of work that have already been submitted. There is much less of an emphasis on design and style of presentation, and a much stronger focus on technical content and the construction of analysis and justification.

This is not a criticism, nor a weakness; rather, it is an indication that Task 3 required groups to use a very different skill-set to that used during the first two tasks.

There was no ‘right’ answer to the task; instead, what I was looking for was for groups to confidently and assertively make a decision and then justify it. This is what a significant proportion of the groups very clearly did, and there appears to be some very strong submissions amongst those I have received.

The main weakness I perceive at this stage is that a small number of groups lacked confidence in making their final decision. In some ways, this was inevitable, especially as the information that groups were given was limited in nature. Nevertheless, I was looking for groups to be bold in reading and responding to the task. Those that were are likely to be those that do well in Task 3.

Overall, this was yet another pleasing task. I am heartened by the way in which students responded and commend them for their efforts. They should be proud of themselves, of the people that helped them, and of their schools.

All that remains for me to do now is provide individual feedback to each of the groups.....and then announce the four teams who will travel to Beijing in November for the Final.

Simon Chadwick

Once again, I congratulate all of the groups for submitting their assignments on time on Friday. The vast majority of groups submitted their work on time and in the appropriate format although there is still one or two issues that need to be addressed.

In particular, please will all groups ensure that when they submit their work to me, they include the task number and school name in the name of the submitted file. This is especially important as one or two groups did not include any sort of identification in their file name or their presentation. This made identifying the groups concerned somewhat difficult. Unfortunately, it appears that we may have lost a group, as I am missing a submission. This means we are down to 19 groups with one task to go – keep trying hard everyone, the Final in Beijing beckons!

I know that a number of groups found Task 2 challenging because they had never put a presentation together before. My first response when briefly looking at the presentations was that everyone has done a great job. People have clearly worked hard to try and get to grips with the task that was set. Well done!

You should keep in mind that presentations are commonly used across British universities: mainly in seminars, but sometimes in lectures too. Often, students will be required to deliver a presentation during a seminar, which is assessed by members of staff and sometimes the other students. In certain cases, presentations may also be videoed and watched by the group later. Keep in mind too that, for those of you who envisage getting a job in sport, business or management, presenting to, for example, clients, managers or the media, is often a routine. So, presentations are important, even if they are actually quite difficult to get right.

For me, the essence of a good presentation is based around the following: economy; simplicity; clarity and focus. In terms of economy, it is very important not to crowd your slides with lots and lots of words and images. Using language and imagery simply and with economy is important – too much on the slide distracts and confuses the people looking at the slides. Linked to this is simplicity; my view is that you must get a clear, simple, well-informed message across to an audience via a presentation. Keep in mind that some people will read your slides without ever being in a presentation where you can explain their content. This means therefore that the slides must be self-explanatory to any reader of them. Clarity reinforces this message: slides must be easy to read, easy to understand and make sense to the reader. In addition, clarity means also being able to read a slide e.g. you don’t use orange coloured fonts on a yellow background (which would be very difficult to read). Also, try not to use pictures as background that makes the words difficult to read. As for focus, I am a firm believer that the best presentations are the ones that are simple and straightforward. Sometimes, I people who use lots of tricks, noises, pictures etc. are actually trying to mask fundamental deficiencies in their work.

Amongst the presentations you have submitted for this task are some excellent examples of work. A number of presentations were nicely constructed, well-informed, professionally developed and highly competent. In such cases, I send my praise and congratulations. Some other presentations were rather less compelling as they often contained too much (and, sometimes, too little) information; too many tricks; and difficult to read text. In most cases, these are not necessarily major problems, but do try and think about how you might do things differently in the future.

Overall, I was excited ahead of receiving the tasks from each of the groups because I really wanted to see what people had come up with. I was not disappointed; there are some great presentations amongst the set I received.

Simon Chadwick

China teams' blog:

Task2 is coming...

Sept 24 was a normal day, the noisy cafeteria is full of students laughing, having fun or falling asleep. But we were all very excited under this calm and general exterior. No need to say, this is the day when Task 2 was going to be released. In teacher’s dorm, we all started the work of the second phase. Speed reading, intense translating, there’s a serious look on everyone of us. The discussion began:

What do you think about this task?

Let's go!

Our team name in the "unlimited" is from the school on the "Learning Unlimited, the development of unlimited" slogan. We are able to play not only bound the space in the existing situation. Moreover, there are school’s teachers and students cheering for us. Let's go! TASK 2 will be a new beginning.

The first week

The first week of the competition, we are kind of busy but everything’s in order. There are 4 people on our team, we are all like clock ticking, tensely and precisely cooperating with each other. From the first day when we received document, to the intense discussion, having division on debates, to the paper writing, amending at last, we all showed good team work and trust. No matter how this ends, we all worked every effort we’ve got, tried as hard as we could and also experienced the funs of the Challenge!  

Yali go 4 goals

Yali go 4 goals is formed by 4 excellent Yali students. We are after the PITCH Dream on the shining stage at Yali School. Our name symbolizes the spirit of the Yali: Seize the opportunity, embrace the glory and release the energy! At the same time Goals not only means every excellent goals on the pitch, but also represents ambitions we are willing to go after with our life times.

I congratulate all of the groups for submitting their assignments on time yesterday. Although there were some minor difficulties in submitting the tasks, everyone is now aware that they should be submitting their tasks via the special task submission button at the bottom of each Challenge task page. In the event of there being a problem with this facility, teams now know that they can submit directly to me using e-mail (Simon.Chadwick@coventry.ac.uk). Time management is a very important skill that students should all be seeking to develop, especially as British universities will often encourage students to demonstrate their time management skills, both in the classroom and in coursework they are set.

Another important skill that teams will have been using is writing and presenting documentation within a word limit. Sometimes this can be a very difficult challenge, especially in cases where a subject illicit strong views or feelings. Again, I send congratulations to the team for being able to submit work within the set limit.

The fact that students are working on The Pitch’s tasks in teams is something again that is commonplace in British education. Clearly there are benefits to carrying out work in teams, and so students should think about how to organise and manage their teams to ensure that the maximum benefits can be achieved. Students, especially those who worked in a group where there might have been some conflict between members, should also give some thought to how they can positively resolve conflict in the future.

As for the content of the task, the decision that students were asked to make was a realistic one, based on the experiences of those people here in Britain who helped design and plan the Challenge. In essence, groups were asked to make exactly the same choice as many clubs make on an annual basis i.e. select a new shirt sponsor.

Students were asked to choose one sponsor from a list of five; the list ranged from sponsors offering short-term deals for relatively large amounts of money, through to long-term deals offering very little money but with presenting the potential for long-term business development. The former has historically been the norm in football: take the money in the short-term, and worry about the long-term later. The latter is becoming much more popular amongst clubs as they seek to build their businesses by working with sponsors to identify new commercial opportunities. Also on the list is the scenario that we have seen developing at Aston Villa and FC Barcelona where the clubs actually give the space on their shirts ‘free’ to charities. The aim of such relationships is to demonstrate corporate social responsibility, but also to build a bond, an affiliation, with fans and prospective fans.

A number of teams requested further information about the club or clarification about the status of the organisation. While I provided some additional information, this was not really needed. The task was simply about making a choice and then justifying it. My advice to some teams was that they were entitled to make certain assumptions about the club as long as they wrote them down in their final report. For future reference, if teams feel as though it can help them explain and justify their decisions, then similar assumptions can be made (although they must be specified in the written documentation you are asked to submit).

Overall, I thought everyone approached the task with enthusiasm and diligence – well done! I look forward to the next task and encourage you to continue working just as hard and just as thoughtfully as this time.

Best

Simon Chadwick