In the early morning of August 1, Beijing time, in the final of the 2022 Women's Football European Championship that ended at Wembley Stadium, the English women's football team defeated the German women's football team that won the tournament eight times through extra time 2:1, and won the championship for the first time in the history of the team. In the women's European Championship final, 87,192 spectators came to Wembley Stadium to watch the game, which also created a new record for the number of live spectators in the history of the Women's European Championship. In the past 10 years, why has the European women's football movement undergone such amazing changes in the short term?
In 1975, the AFC founded the first Women's Asian Cup, and it was not until 1982 that UEFA decided to hold the first Women's European Cup in 1984, when only Sweden, England, Italy and Denmark participated. This model of only four teams playing remained until 1997, when it expanded to eight teams, during which time the total number of spectators for each Women's European Championship remained at around 30,000, and at the 2013 Women's European Championship, the host Sweden's live match against Denmark was a surprise of 16,000 spectators.
Less than a decade later, at the opening match of the Women's European Championship on July 7, the host England beat Austria 1:0, and the Old Trafford Stadium poured in a total of 68,871 spectators, setting a record for a single game in the Women's European Cup. The entire ticket sales of the women's European Cup has exceeded 500,000 tickets, twice as much as the previous cup, 43% of the tickets are purchased by female fans, you know, last year's men's European Cup, the total number of spectators was only doubled, 1.09 million.
Sun Wen, a women's football celebrity and vice president of the Chinese Football Association, also said, "I have been paying attention to the information of this aspect of the competition. The most shocking thing is that the number of spectators present should be very, very rare in history. ”
Why is European women's football developing so fast? Among them, England, which has the world's first league, is undoubtedly at the forefront, and in 2011, the women's premier league officially came out, which replaced the original women's football league. In the following ten years, the Women's Premier League not only joined the sub-leagues, but also completed the expansion of the army, so that the entire league was integrated into the FA Women's Football League system. The 2017-18 women's Premier League season was directly transformed into a professional league.
In terms of commercial development, LONG-term FA partner Barclays Bank began naming the women's Premier League in 2019, with the two sides signing a three-year contract. In 2021, Barclays Bank renewed its contract with the women's Premier League until 2025, and also won the naming rights of the English women's sub-league. The naming cost of the new contract has doubled from the previous one, totalling £30 million.
In the past, the U.S. Women's Major League has always been considered the largest league in women's football, but now the Women's Premier League has become a stage that all players dream of, taking Asian players as an example, Tang Jiali of the Chinese women's football team once played for Tottenham Hotspur in the new season, and now has joined the CFF club in La Liga, Hayley Lasso in Australia at Manchester City, South Korean player Chi Xiaoran plays for Chelsea, and Japan's Shina Iwabuchi plays for Arsenal...
In addition to the Premier League, Wang Shuang's Ligue 1 and Tang Jiali's newly joined La Liga have become the stage for many female footballers' dreams, and Zhang Linyan is also about to appear in the Swiss League.
UEFA has also actively carried out women's football promotion activities, and launched the theme activity of "We Play Strong" in 2017, proposing six measures to promote the development of women's football in Europe. Taking Italy as an example, after 2017, Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan have established women's football teams.
In the second leg of the 2021-22 women's Champions League semi-finals, the Barça women's football team faced the Real Madrid women's football team at home, and the Barça club specially placed this game at the Camp Nou Stadium, and finally entered 91,553 people on the spot, setting a new record for the number of spectators set by the 1999 World Cup final.
UEFA launched the "Time for Action" programme in 2019, and through the implementation of the women's football development plan, it is hoped that by 2024, the number of women playing football under UEFA member associations will double to 2.5 million.
Since the 2019 Women's World Cup, the European women's football team has risen strongly, winning 7 seats in the top 8 and 3 seats in the top 4, of which England has reached the final four in the two Women's World Cups in 2015 and 2019, and the Dutch women's football team, which has hit the Chinese women's football team 8:2 at the Tokyo Olympic Games, only participated in the World Cup for the first time in 2015, won the European Cup in 2017, won the World Cup runner-up in 2019, and now led the coach Wigman, who won the championship LinkedIn the Gran women's football team. It was the meritorious manager who led the Dutch rise.
At the competitive level, a large number of UEFA-trained licensed coaches have joined the women's football team, so that the quality of women's football matches that were previously criticized has now been significantly improved in terms of competition intensity and ornamentation.
Huang Jianxiang exclaimed, "Women's European Championship final, England vs. Germany... The degree of confrontation of this game, the rhythm of the game, is almost like the 1.5 times fast-forward play of the Women's Asian Cup."
On July 17, the Chinese women's football team set off for Japan to participate in the East Asian Cup, zhang Linyan said in an interview that she was paying attention to the women's football Team European Cup: "Because we have been playing very few competitions now, let's understand it, give ourselves an intuitive shock, I think they are making so fast progress." ”
Sun Wen also believes that the overall level of European women's football has been ahead, "each position of the European team has 90 minutes of continuous repetition of high ability, high sprint, in the case of high sprint high ability to engage in confrontation, can have better execution." These are very shocking to us."
In terms of the Chinese women's football league, the 2020 season only has 10 million people to watch the game, due to the enthusiasm brought by the Chinese women's football team in the Asian Cup at the beginning of the year, the number of spectators in the first few rounds of the women's super league this year has increased by 30 times compared with the past, but the low attention has caused the women's football club to be difficult in commercial development and operation, which is also very similar to the men's football club, and it is difficult to improve in the short term, and the women's national team has begun to train and prepare, and the league has been interrupted.
In terms of income, China's women's football players are not as embarrassed as in the past, according to the FIFA 2021 report, the average investment of Chinese women's Super League clubs is about 1.85 million US dollars, the average salary investment ratio is 56%, and each club invests about 1 million US dollars in salary.
In order to improve the level of players to prepare for next year's World Cup and the next Paris Olympic Qualifiers, Liuyang has become the most urgent task, Sun Wen said: "Regarding Liuyang, as a player, there is a very important word, a strong opponent can achieve a strong self. ”
At present, in addition to Tang Jiali and Zhang Linyan joining the Premier League and the Swiss Super League respectively, Shen Monroe has joined the Su Super Celtics.
Upstream journalist Tang Hao