Reporter Wang Wei reported that on the morning of May 18, the second phase of the Asian qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympic Women's Football Championship was drawn at the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As a seeded team, the Chinese women's football team is in Group B with the South Korean women's football team, the Thai women's football team and the North Korean women's football team. This stage of the competition is scheduled to be held from October 23 to November 1 this year, and the Chinese women's football team will play as the host of Group B. On the afternoon of May 18, the head coach of the women's football team, Shui Qingxia, said in an exclusive interview with this newspaper that "the strength of the four teams is between Bozhong" and will do her best to prepare.
In addition to the Women's World Cup in July, the Hangzhou Asian Games and the Paris Olympic Women's Asian Qualifiers are called the three major tasks of Chinese women's football in 2023. According to the Chinese Football Association's women's football training plan, the Chinese women's football team began training at Shanghai Oriental Green Boat Sports Training Base on May 17, and transferred to Qingdao Guoxin Sports Center for the next stage of training on June 10, and the team's primary goal is to prepare for the Women's World Cup in July.
On the morning of May 18, it was the time of the draw for the second phase of the Asian qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympic Women's Football Championship, and the Chinese women's football coaching staff who had already paid attention to the draw at the Shanghai Oriental Green Boat Sports Training Base paid attention to the draw for the first time. In the end, the Chinese women's football team will be placed in Group B and will compete with the South Korean women's team, the Thai women's football team and the North Korean women's football team to qualify for the spot. The draw results for the other two groups were Group A: Australia Women's Football, Chinese Taipei Women's Football Team, Philippine Women's Football Team, Iran Women's Football Team; Group C: Japan Women's Team, Vietnam Women's Football Team, Uzbekistan Women's Football Team, India Women's Football Team.
This group is a veritable "group of death". Among them, the Chinese women's football team and the South Korean women's football team have met 45 times in history, and the Chinese women's football team has won 31, drawn 7 and lost 7, scoring 109 goals and conceding 32 goals. The two teams have met unbeaten in the last nine meetings, with the Chinese women's team last losing in August 2015 in the East Asian Cup. Recent familiar battles between China and South Korea include a 4-3 defeat of South Korea over two legs in the 2020 Olympic qualifiers and a 3-2 victory over South Korea in the 2022 Asian Cup final.
In the 17 historical meetings with the Thai women's football team, the Chinese women's football team is unbeaten with 16 wins and 1 draw, scoring 73 goals and conceding 8 goals, occupying an absolute advantage, but the Thai women's football team currently ranks 7th in Asia and has also qualified for the Women's World Cup, which is not a fish belly compared with other opponents in the same class.
The strongest opponent of the Chinese women's football team in the same group is the North Korean women's football team. The North Korean women's football team has not competed at the Asian and international levels for more than four years so far, and the Asian qualifiers for the Paris Olympics will mark their debut since March 2019. Previously, the North Korean women's football team was temporarily disqualified by FIFA due to a long absence from international A-level competitions, and they were ranked 10th in the world when they last entered the FIFA women's rankings, and they are the leaders of Asian women's football.
North Korea's women's football team has achieved excellent results at the Asian level, and is known for its fierceness, strong penetration and strong confrontation ability, and has won the Women's Asian Cup three times, the Women's Asian Games championship three times, and the Women's East Asian Cup three times, especially since the 21st century, the Chinese women's football team has played with it 29 times, only 4 wins, 9 draws and 16 defeats, completely falling behind. The most recent meeting between the two sides, at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, in the third round of the group stage, the Chinese women's football team won 2-0 against the North Korean women's team thanks to goals from Wang Shuang and Wang Shanshan.
After the lottery, our reporter interviewed Shui Qingxia, the head coach of the Chinese women's football team, on the lottery, "Our group is still very strong, it can be said that it is the death group in the three groups, and the strength of these four teams is between Bozhong, each with its own characteristics." Now that the results of the draw are in, we will do our best to prepare. Shui Qingxia believes that this group is an absolute death group, "The other two groups should be relatively better, now what we have to do is to treat it correctly, now the results have been drawn, and we must actively prepare for the war." ”
The second phase of the Asian Women's Qualifiers for the Paris Olympics is scheduled to take place from October 23 to November 1, with the Chinese women's football team playing as the host of Group B. In the second stage of the competition, the first place in the three groups and the second place with the highest points will advance to the third round. The four teams that advance to the third round will be divided into two groups that will be played home and away on 24 and 28 February 2024 respectively, with the winning team receiving two qualifying places for the women's Asian zone at Paris 2024.
Shortly after the results of the second phase of the Olympic preliminary round were announced, the Chinese Football Association also announced the third training list of the Chinese women's football team in 2023 to prepare for the Women's World Cup, which is divided into two phases, in Shanghai and Qingdao. The 26-person roster is little changed from the previous training camp, with only Wu Chengshu, who plays for Canberra United in the Australian Women's League, returning. The notice pointed out that in terms of recruiting overseas athletes, the Chinese women's football team will make supplementary recruitment according to the needs of the team and the end time of overseas leagues.
"Because the overseas leagues they play for have different end times, some until the end of May, some to the beginning of May, some even longer, so it is not realistic for them to come back right away at the moment. Because Wu Chengshu's matches in the Australian Women's Super League have ended, she returned to the team early, and then these overseas players will make some adjustments and additions to the current list after their league is over. Shui Qingxia said.
This year, the Chinese women's football team faces the three major events of the Women's World Cup, the Hangzhou Asian Games and the Paris Olympic Qualifiers, and Shui Qingxia has introduced that the player list will be dynamically adjusted according to the different opponents.
Regarding the question of whether the players who performed better in the Women's Super League had a chance to be selected for the national team during the preparation for the World Cup, Shui Qingxia said: "The current performance of the national team players from last year to now should be said to be good, so I also want to continue this list, of course, the players who perform well in the league are also in the national team's squad, and some supplements may be made in the later period." ”