Truly professional
What is professional?
Chinese women's football has returned to the peak of Asia after 16 years, the praise of Chinese women's football from all walks of life is not excessive from any point of view, head coach Shui Qingxia, as the witness of the sonorous rose of that year, has become a meritorious person, sought after by all walks of life, and even some people shouted: "Let Shui Qingxia take over the Chinese men's football team!" However, Shui Qingxia can lead the Chinese women's football team to make a breakthrough, and transplanting it to the men's football team may not be feasible. When we are all talking about the need for professionals to do professional things in Chinese football, Shui Qingxia's success actually really explains to some extent what is really "professional people doing professional things". Shui Qingxia's success is not replicable for the current Chinese men's football team, but it is something that the current Chinese men's football team can vigorously promote, and it is also the only way to success.
1
20 years of patience at the grassroots level
After the women's football team returned to China, a relevant person from the Football Association told reporters that in recent days, more than 100 applications for interviews with Shui Qingxia and Chinese women's football have been requested, and even some institutions and organizations that have never been heard of before. This reflects the current popularity of women's football from one side, and also forms a sharp contrast with the Chinese men's football team, which is also isolated in Suzhou.
When we discuss why the Chinese women's football team can regain the Asian championship after 16 years, different people will naturally have different opinions from different perspectives. What the reporter wants to say is that the most important thing about Shui Qingxia's success lies in her own growth experience, she has been patient and at ease with grassroots work for many years, and has accumulated to a certain extent before seizing this rare opportunity and thus erupting.
Without the grassroots accumulation of 16 or 7 years from 2001 when she retired from the women's football team and was appointed as the coach of the women's national team in November 2021, Shui Qingxia would definitely not be able to lead the Chinese women's football team to regain the top, or the probability would not be very high. And these 20 years of forbearance are precisely what Chinese football, especially Chinese men's football, lacks the most!
2
Coach professionalism from beginning to end
After the fiasco of the women's football team in the Tokyo Olympics, the reporter had a small chat with a number of women's football people, including the Football Association, and when asked who would be the manager, the reporter said bluntly: Under the premise of confirming that it is the local coach, either directly let Shui Qingxia continue, or let the current U20 women's youth team coach Wang Junshang. Why? The reason given by the reporter is simple: First of all, in the current women's football first team coaches, most of the coaches are halfway out of the house, and they are forced to choose to coach the women's football team when they can't find a job in the men's football team. Among them, Shui Qingxia and Wang Jun, who are willing to coach women's football and can sink their hearts to work in a down-to-earth manner, are two representative figures. In this case, the willingness to coach women's football and being forced to leave men's football and take up the whip of women's football are two completely different attitudes, which determine completely different results, especially the women's football team's attention is very low, and the treatment is far from being comparable to men's football. Coaches who can rest assured that women's football coaches should be valued and reused.
For the Chinese Football Association, this is a guiding issue. In the 20 years since the meritorious coach Ma Yuan'an lost to North Korea in the semi-finals of the 13th Women's Asian Cup in December 2001 and lost the Asian Cup for the first time, Shui Qingxia has been the 15th head coach of the Chinese women's national football team! That is to say, the average tenure of the head coach of the Chinese women's football team is 1 year and 4 months. During this period, the shortest is only 5 months, and the longest is probably Shui Qingxia's predecessor Jia Xiuquan, almost 3 years. Of the 15 managers, only Ma Liangxing, who came out twice, won the 2006 Women's Asian Cup once, while the rest were lackluster. Changing a coach is not terrible, the question is why and how to change. In the past 20 years and 14 women's football coaches before Shui Qingxia, how many of them have been promoted by relationship? These include greetings from the top, the preferences of the leaders in charge, the struggles between different factions and regions, resulting in the forced choice of foreign religions to appease the interests and contradictions between the various factions, and so on. In the whole process, there is a lack of professional choices that are more in line with the logic of football. With this orientation unchanged, it is difficult for the Chinese women's football team to see hope. And this time, Shui Qingxia's ascension to the top is the victory of the real "professionalism" of Chinese football.
After retiring in 2001, Shui Qingxia successively served as an assistant coach and head coach at Shanghai Junior Sports School, the Chinese Women's Youth Team, and the Shanghai Youth Women's Football Team, until 2014, when she became the head coach of Shanghai Women's Football, and worked in the Shanghai Women's Football Coach for more than seven years. That is to say, from retirement to becoming the coach of Chinese women's football, he has dealt with women's football as a coach for more than 20 years and has never left. When we talk about Chinese men's football, how many of the current Chinese men's football coaches have a similar experience with Shui Qingxia? That is, starting from the most basic youth team, and then engaged in coaching work, rather than serving as the so-called general manager, deputy general manager, team leader and other non-football coaches. Although these positions are also engaged in football-related work, after all, all the energy is not used to delve into football techniques and tactics and the business itself, but more to deal with people.
Most of our men's football coaches are reluctant to start from the most basic youth teams, but prefer to directly lead the Chinese Super League team or even the national team and national team. Because the first thing that the grassroots youth team encounters is that the treatment is far from being comparable to when they were players, and it is more difficult. But a good player is not necessarily a good coach, which has been widely proven in world football. The most recent example is Pirlo coaching Juventus, and the best coaches in world football started with junior teams at the grassroots level.
The so-called "professional people do professional things" does not mean that good players who have played football can lead the first team to success after retirement. In terms of playing football, these former players are professional; but after retiring as a coach, it can only be said that they have the potential to become good coaches. The same is true for management work. Moreover, because the general environment of the Chinese men's football team itself is more complex, the interest temptation is greater, and there are many kinds of interference. In this case, it is not surprising that the Chinese men's football team has not had a coach like Shui Qingxia who has been lurking at the grassroots level for nearly 20 years.
Of course, it must be admitted that even in the Chinese women's football industry, there are few coaches like Shui Qingxia, otherwise the generation like "Sonorous Rose" will only be Shui Qingxia who has completely transformed successfully and become the coach of women's football. This is precisely the quality that a good coach who is engaged in football and becomes successful must have: to be patient, willing to be lonely, and dare to face failure, because he or she first likes football from the bottom of his heart, rather than thinking about what more benefits he or she gets from football in the first place. Just like Shui Qingxia has succeeded now, she has also experienced failures in the process of teaching, but the outside world now only sees her success more.
3
Professional accumulation has accumulated thick and thin fruits
Remember that after winning the Chinese Super League championship in the Taishan team at the end of last year, the reporter wrote in the "Hao Wei Leading the Spring of Tu Shuai?" The article once clearly stated, "We are accustomed to evaluating the quality and ability of a coach based on how the coach leads the team, and more ignore the coach's coaching experience and independent command from the early stage of teaching." Frankly, a coach is hard to understand without 200 to 250 games of independent command. Putting aside all kinds of complex off-field factors, why do we always say 'the old coach can see clearly', because the old coach has coached more games, experienced more, encountered more complex situations, and naturally experienced more deeply. ”
In fact, the same applies to Shui Qingxia, and even during this women's Asian Cup, the skill shown by Water Guidance in terms of employing people and on-the-spot command is the best embodiment of her experience and achievements in taking root in the grassroots and being at ease with women's football over the years. Shui Qingxia has been working in the shanghai women's football coach position for more than seven years, and the number of Chinese women's Super League games is not much, but with the addition of women's football championships, FA Cup and other various competitions, 30 games a year, seven years can exceed 200 games, plus the previous experience as the head coach of the youth team, Water Guidance has independently directed more than 300 large and small games. Of course, there are many titles of various titles. She just turned 55 at the end of last year, whether it is her life experience or her understanding of the sport of women's football, it has reached a certain level.
It is precisely because she has accumulated to a certain extent in the professional field of real football coaching, so we can see that in the semi-final match against Japan, the Chinese women's football team unexpectedly arranged forward Wang Shanshan to the position of center back! Instead, it was Li Jiayue, a disciple of the Water Guide. Yang Lina and Zhao Lina were also disciples of Shui Coach during the Shanghai women's football team, but when Yang Lina made a major mistake against Vietnam and lost the ball and was replaced in the second half, the semi-finals and finals did not get another chance to play; and Zhao Lina did not play again. This shows the water-directed soccer sanity and replaces simple emotions!
In the final championship and runner-up final against the South Korean women's football team, in the face of the situation that the Chinese women's football team was 0-2 behind, the substantial adjustment after the water guidance half- was probably not a pre-game deployment that could take into account all aspects, but an adjustment and deployment made at the right time based on the understanding of the players under the team and the judgment of the situation on the field. On the one hand, this shows the on-the-spot command ability of Water Guidance, and on the other hand, it reflects her understanding of the current Chinese female footballers. This "understanding" is not only based on data, but also on the overall understanding of the individual abilities, daily execution, personality and so on of these players. Therefore, letting Shui Qingxia directly take over the Chinese men's football team has no possibility of success.
Perhaps what Chinese men's football coaches lack most at the moment is the level of understanding of their players. Moreover, because the time for the men's football coach to lead the team independently and the number of games he has commanded are few before he is appointed to the national team or the national team, like the current Chinese mesozoic coaches, whether it is the current national football coach Li Xiaopeng, or the former Li Tie, Hao Wei, who won the "double crown" last year, or like Li Jinyu, Zhao Junzhe, Yu Genwei and even Including Chen Yang, the number of independently commanded games is only double digits, and Li Xiaopeng and Chen Yang are only a hundred games. The various complicated situations that occur in the course of football matches are still not experienced enough, and it still takes time to accumulate slowly, so I am afraid that it is difficult to have water to guide such on-the-spot performances in a short period of time. Therefore, the outside world needs to give enough patience and time to promote their further growth.
Shui Qingxia led the Chinese women's football team to regain the Asian championship, and no one can predict how high the upper limit of the Chinese women's football team will be under the leadership of Shui Guidance. However, in today's materialistic Chinese football world, whether it is men's or women's football, how can those real football professionals who are willing to be tolerant at the grassroots level have the opportunity to shine and heat up? This is what Chinese football must really pay attention to in terms of coach training and selection, and it is a very important "orientation" issue. Football itself needs to have enough patience and perseverance, it takes time, and the cultivation and excavation of local coaches is even more so, and Shui Qingxia has set a good example in this regard.
This is probably the biggest enlightenment that Shui Qingxia led the Chinese women's football team to return to the top of Asia after 16 years!