Wang Shanshan, 32, from Luoyang, Henan Province, is a Chinese women's footballer and captain of the Chinese women's football team. In the final of the Women's Asian Cup on February 6, it was she who assisted Xiao Yuyi in overtime to help the Chinese women's football team win the Asian Cup again after 16 years. After the game, the Chinese women's football team became a business card of Chinese sports in an instant, and Wang Shanshan, who was elected the best player in the event, became a national hero.
However, on February 7, the first working day after the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, as people threw themselves into their daily work, as the Winter Olympic Games progressed, the women's football team and Wang Shanshan would soon be forgotten. In 2022, the Chinese women's football team exchanged "fighting" for the ninth Asian Cup championship, but we do not know when the women's football team will be able to participate in the final again, and how long the women's football team's "fight" can maintain the team.
We need more Wang Shanshan
Wang Shanshan is 32 years old, is an uncompromising veteran, although she can still continue to follow the team as the captain of the women's football team, but her career is about to enter the final stage is an indisputable fact, our Chinese women's football team needs the next Wang Shanshan, Tang Jiali and Wang Shuang. But can we really walk out of the next Wang Shanshan? The reality is not optimistic. This is like the Chinese women's volleyball team that was out of the Olympic games last year, many people encouraged the women's volleyball team to continue to work hard, but what few people know is that there is a big gap in the cultivation of Chinese women's volleyball talents at this stage. The Chinese women's volleyball team is actually a microcosm of the Chinese women's movement, and the women's football team is facing a similar dilemma to the women's volleyball team - the difficulty of talent selection and the sharp decline in the population of the relevant sports, which is an indisputable fact.
Interestingly, Wang Shanshan practiced volleyball in her early years, and her mentor Coach Geng Hongjie believed that her height was not enough, and the road to development in the field of volleyball in the future would become more and more narrow, so the later women's football captain embarked on the road of football. According to Coach Geng, when he first persuaded Father Wang to let his daughter practice soccer, the former was hesitant because the ordinary father had no clear concept of sports, and all he wanted in mind was to let his daughter study well. Fortunately, Wang's father did not categorically refuse this path for his daughter to continue practicing sports, otherwise Wang Shanshan would also become a buried talent.
Where is the next Wang Shanshan? This is a big question, not only for Chinese football, for Chinese women's football, but also for the Chinese sports community.
People are well aware that practicing physical education is a very hard thing, and the success rate is extremely low, and the difficulty of getting out of the head is much higher than entering a university and becoming an ordinary office worker. Therefore, many sports have a big gap in the selection of talents, because few parents are willing to let their children make this bet.
During the National Games last year, Xinhua News Agency had an article entitled "How about the reserve talents of the Chinese women's volleyball team?" Seedlings are difficult to find, do not attract children in big cities" article, more objective and detailed description of the current Chinese women's volleyball project talent training encountered dilemma. The women's volleyball team can be said to be the mainland women's project, the best historical achievements, the most sought after one. But even so, the talent training of the women's volleyball team still encountered great difficulties. And the situation of women's football will not be much better.
However, compared with the women's volleyball team, the conditions of women's football are relatively good. No matter how low the level of Chinese football is, football is still the most professional, the most market-oriented, and the least expensive of all sports in China. Many people always seize the low salary of women's football to diss Chinese men's football team, but in fact, the average salary income of Chinese women's football players belongs to a higher level in the world. Let's compare it with numbers:
At present, the women's premier league where Tang Jiali plays, the average annual income of the players is about 30,000 euros, which is equivalent to about 220,000 yuan. The average income of international players in the domestic women's Super League has reached the range of 300,000 to 1 million yuan (in May 2021, FIFA Benchmarking Report - Women's Football released by FIFA showed that the average annual income of Chinese women's football clubs was 1.1 million US dollars. And the salaries of our women's super league players are at the forefront of the world, And Liu You, the general manager and head coach of Changchun Volkswagen Excellence Women's Football, revealed in an interview that the salaries of many elite players of the Chinese women's football team in the club can reach 2 million yuan, even if the general main annual salary is more than 1 million, which is really not less in the women's football world). Women's football international star players like Wang Shanshan and Wang Shuang are absolutely first-class in their domestic income. The Japanese women's professional football league WE LEAGUE, which just started in September last year, stipulates that the minimum guaranteed salary for players is 2.7 million yen, which is equivalent to about 150,000 yuan. Therefore, the people who "earn less" for the women's football team every day just want to take the opportunity to humiliate the men's football team.
Returning to the truth, women's football in China can have a relatively good income level in Asia and even in the world, which is enough to show that football is still more valued in China. With people paying attention and people willing to invest, football can make people see the future. This objective condition is much better than other sports, after all, most of the projects are not market-oriented enough, still taking the professional system, and the league is even less formed than the women's football team. Therefore, what women's football actually has to solve is, in the final analysis, talent training. In addition, there is how to keep up with the trend of the world.
Women's football needs to see the world trend clearly
Chinese women's football in China is more often a tool to play the role of "diss men's football", which may be the "greatest meaning" of its existence. As for what kind of operation mode the women's football team is in the weekdays, what kind of ecological environment it is, and what kind of competitions there are, few people care. Domestic people do not care, let alone care about the development of the world women's football trend. Many people still have the impression of women's football, still stuck in the 90s "sonorous rose" too illusory.
In 2011, the Japanese women's football team won the World Cup, which is the peak performance of the Asian women's football team to date. However, in the following 10 years, as the traditional powers of European football have paid more and more attention to the development of women's football, the gap between Asian women's football and Europe has become wider and wider. In 2015, the Chinese women's football team could still beat the Dutch women's football team 1-0, but last year's Olympic Games suffered a humiliating 0-8 defeat. As the strongest team in Asia 10 years ago, the gap with European teams has become more and more obvious in recent years, and when facing European teams, they have been powerless.
In the 2019 Women's World Cup final, and the women's semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics last year, the United States defeated the Netherlands twice, but what we can see is that as the strongest team in the women's football world, the advantages of the United States team are shrinking a little. It's like the Korean team that our Chinese women's football team is facing, the opponent is improving, and our lead is being swallowed up step by step. This is the current state of women's football and Asian women's football.
Many people remember Fan Zhiyi's saying that "the face of Chinese football is gone", but in fact, his most essential sentence is "first clarify the concept". In China, many people are confused about the concept of football and even sports competitions.
Women's football is not a tool used to humiliate men's football in the first place, and although people with this idea are calling for more attention to women's football every day, they are actually the group of people who most insult women's football. Not just women's football, but the entire Chinese sports world, we all need to follow the trend a little less and pay more attention. Not only to ourselves, but also to the changes in the world of sports. Just like the Chinese women's ice hockey team that defeated the Japanese team in the Winter Olympics, in fact, the gap between this team and the world's strongest teams is still very obvious, and it is very exciting to be able to beat Denmark and Japan in succession, but it cannot be selectively ignored the fact that Chinese women's ice is the lowest ranked team in the world among all participating teams.
The goal of the Chinese women's football team should be to perform well in the World Cup, rather than just getting an Asian Cup that is gradually moving away from the world level and becoming complacent. Next summer is the Women's World Cup jointly organized by Australia and New Zealand, and the Chinese women's football team will once again embark on the journey. A year and a half from now, will our women's football league be better? Will our women's football team have a higher level of attention? If our team plays against the european teams, the result is not satisfactory, will it be full of insults? At that time, will the team's head coach still be Shui Qingxia? To be sure, the authors are not optimistic about the answers to these questions. But in any case, the women's football team can get a trophy is something worth celebrating after all, and I hope to take this as a starting point to let the women's football team get more attention in China, only the mass base is the best development momentum for a project.
The Chinese women's football team should not only be remembered for Wang Shanshan, Zhang Linyan, Tang Jiali and a trophy. We still have more foundations to consolidate, and we also need the continuous attention and participation of the public.
Text/Supine Braces - Yangyuan Zhang