Written by Allgäu
The "Sonorous Rose" is blooming in Asia again! In the final of the 2022 Asian Cup, the Chinese women's football team defeated the South Korean women's football team 3-2 and won the championship. There are too many things to remember in this game: the Jedi counterattack that is two goals behind, the magical substitution of Shui Qingxia, the killing of Xiao Yuyi... In the history of Chinese football, this is destined to be a classic battle that will go down in history.
As a result, the Chinese football world ushered in a carnival that almost far exceeded the "specifications" of women's football in the past: a staggering number of fans poured into the social platform of women's football to express their joy after winning the championship; a large company announced the "heavy prize" for women's football for the first time, and the Football Association will even give women's football more than the men's football winning award. Even if the old women's football team was the seventh consecutive champion of the Asian Cup and once won the world cup runner-up, it has never been treated so courteously.
After winning the championship, the Chinese women's football team now seems to have neither a shortage of fans nor money.
The Chinese women's football team is indeed not short of money now. In addition to the record-setting huge championship prize money, as early as a few years ago, the Chinese Football Association signed a sponsorship agreement with enterprises; in addition, the Football Association also required every club in the Chinese Super League to have a women's football team from 2020, which fundamentally solved the low-income dilemma of female footballers and raised the women's football salary to the world's top two levels.
Although it cannot be paid the same as the men's football team, in terms of the support for the women's football team, Chinese football does have the courage to pat the chest and announce: We are at the forefront of the world.
However, there is no shortage of fans in women's football, which is a complete illusion.
The Chinese Women's Super League has been born for more than two decades; but for a long time, this league has never won the attention of the fan community. Anyone who knows a little about the development of Chinese women's football knows how dismal the attendance rate of the women's super league is. In the 2019 season, the match between The Beijing Women's Football Team and the Wuhan Women's Football Team brought about 10,000 fans into the Huangshi Stadium, which is said to have set a record for the highest attendance in the history of the Women's Super League, and it is also the maximum box office appeal that wang Shuang and Ma Xiaoxu, two legendary stars of Chinese women's football, can achieve on the court.
However, not only is there still a significant gap between this appeal and the men's football league, but after the game, even the media exposed that the vast majority of tickets for this game are free tickets. In other words, such a "high" attendance rate may actually be just a beautiful lie.
For most women's super league games, not counting the team staff in the stands, it is not easy to fill 100 "real" fans in a game. And among these fans, the number of female fans is very small and small – this is a very peculiar phenomenon.
The long-term lack of attention and mass base has already caused serious obstacles to the development of Chinese women's football. In recent years, the number of registered players in Chinese women's football has been maintained at 3,000 to 5,000, less than one-tenth of the United States, and has been surpassed by Japan in Asia. In contrast, the competitiveness of the Chinese women's football team in the international arena is far less than that year, taking the Asian Cup as an example, the women's football team is facing Japan and South Korea to win the risk, and the top 8 matches are even scored by The fish belly Vietnam.
Although this group of players and coaches worked together to save the team's decline, we have to admit that the Chinese women's football team is not invincible; once the state rises and falls, what will public opinion do? The insults of the Tokyo Olympics are still ringing in the ears. Speaking of which, this is quite similar to the Chinese men's football team - when it wins, it will be held up to the altar, and if it loses, it will fall into hell, and in such a cycle of "diodes", Chinese football is trembling forward.
The more difficult thing about women's football than men's football is that they only have a sense of presence in the competition. In the past, Chinese women's football teams were not without width, but often once the heat of the competition passed, the women's football team that returned to China immediately fell into the dilemma of no one caring. This time, although the women's football team won the Asian Cup, although it suddenly "exploded" a seemingly large number of fans, how long this heat can last is still a question.
After all, the taste of loneliness after the prosperity is really familiar to the girls of the Chinese women's football team; from Sun Wen to Wang Shuang, some things have not changed. Now, in the face of the rising heat and surging traffic on social and short video platforms, probably even they will feel confused: Do we really have so many fans?
Yes, at least for now it can be said that there are many fans of women's football. That being the case, during the Spring Festival holiday, the fans and friends who gathered together because of the amazing performance of the Chinese women's football team, this number may be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of huge groups, even if one percent or one in a thousand of them can really fall in love with this team after the Asian Cup, and in the future, they are willing to buy a ticket to the women's super league when conditions permit; even if it is just to take a moment to remember the names of all the players in the women's football team. If this can be done, for the Chinese women's football team itself, it may be a better result than winning the Asian Cup.