If the Chinese women's volleyball team wants to win back attention, is it enough to win four consecutive victories?
Author: Mo Xiaojun
Number of characters: 3385
Recommended reading time: 13 minutes
Nagoya, Japan, the Women's World Volleyball League is hotly played. The Chinese women's volleyball team led by Cai Bin with a new look is competing with the world's fierce rivals, training new teams and creating a new system. In the current team, only captains Yuan Xinyue and Gong Xiangyu are Rio Olympic champions, and 9 of the team participated in last year's Women's Volleyball World Championships, and the rest are new faces.
After four consecutive wins, the outside world began to pay attention to the women's volleyball team
With four consecutive wins, the Chinese women's volleyball team became the only undefeated team in Nagoya. A senior Xinhua media person used "unconsciously" to describe the feeling of winning four consecutive championships. In his opinion, the current women's volleyball team is simple and low-key, but it is eye-catching. His description expresses the feelings of many people, and the current Chinese women's volleyball team is no longer a team with countless halos on the altar. But even when this team played against Japan, when trailing by 8 points in the second game, it was able to reverse and win, boost morale, and play the team's domineering and self-confidence, which is also the heritage that the Chinese women's volleyball team has never lost.
From the departure to the start of the fight, the Chinese women's volleyball team led by Cai Bin has an "unconscious" feeling in the outside world. If you are not a big fan of the Chinese women's volleyball team, you will not know where they started, what the schedule is, whether they are not satisfied, and so on. Obviously, for the past years when Lang Ping served as the head coach of the Chinese women's volleyball team and created the indelible and irreplaceable myth of this team, every move of the Chinese women's volleyball team was the focus of attention of all walks of life, whether it was mainstream media or self-media. The angle of the report and the content are all exclusive and novel, and the media will "put down the blood" to follow the team all the way. Looking at the attention of the World Women's Volleyball League, the outside world's coverage of this event has returned to ordinary operations, and the highlights of the unified stylized operation after the game make people unable to see the past coverage of the high-density output of women's volleyball.
But it was in such an "unconscious" way that Cai Bin played the "masterpiece" of his second year of leading the team, exerting the power of the team's high blocking, height and speed, and using four consecutive wins to play the aura for the coach. Attention is never sought, only victory, continuous victory can lay the foundation of a team. From the very beginning of the low-key silence to the current four-game winning streak, Cai Bin has at least made a good start for himself and his team, and also let the sponsors who ambush the Paris Olympics see the hope and motivation to shoot. After all, the Chinese women's volleyball team is still the Chinese women's volleyball team, unlike any other team, there is a natural sports feeling of the Chinese people, which is also the most easy to impress the emotional background of the outside world in sports marketing.
Women's volleyball attention declines because the level of the event is not enough?
For those who are not fans of women's volleyball, the name of the "Women's World Volleyball League" is slightly unfamiliar. After all, more people are familiar with the three major competitions of women's volleyball: the Olympic Games, the World Championship and the World Cup. Compared with the three major competitions, the importance of the Women's World Volleyball League cannot be compared. But speaking of the predecessor of this event, many people may suddenly realize: the World Women's Volleyball Grand Prix, founded in 1993, is the largest, highest level and most influential women's volleyball commercial competition held by the FIVB. In 2018, FIVB upgraded the tournament to the Women's World Volleyball League.
Although the World Women's Volleyball League is not as important as the three major competitions, for the Chinese women's volleyball team, which is experiencing growing pains, this event still has special significance in 2023.
First of all, for the women's volleyball team in the transition stage of the old and the new, the most important task this year, in addition to the Asian Games on its doorstep, is whether it can lock a seat in the Paris Olympic qualifiers, which will start on September 16-24. For these two major events that cannot be missed, the task of the World Women's Volleyball League is to train the team, find the gap of "Cai Jiajun" in the game, run in the team, cultivate tacit understanding, and train troops for the two major competitions in September.
Secondly, a major change in the Women's World Volleyball League compared to the past is the start of calculating world ranking points. The points will be related to the situation of the Paris Olympic grouping, and if you want to get a favorable group spot in Paris, you have to see the ranking points and the opponent's entanglement, and being able to avoid the sworn enemy meeting again in the second half of the schedule is a scene that any team is looking forward to. That is to say, in fact, every step taken by the current Chinese women's volleyball team is interconnected and implicated in each other. If you want to get on the podium in Paris or even replicate the myth, you need to balance strength and luck, after all, the shocking reversal of "escaping from death" is not always staged.
Without Lang Ping + Zhu Ting, the women's volleyball team lost two of the most valuable IPs
The most direct reason for the "myth" of the Chinese women's volleyball team is Lang Ping's departure. The legend of the Chinese women's volleyball team created by this meritorious coach has become a glorious past that cannot be replicated in the history of Chinese sports. Leaving from a glorious high, any team will face the difficulty of climbing again, not to mention such a team that has formed countless Chinese feelings and is related to China's three major ball faces.
After Lang Ping left office, Cai Bin took over. As the players of the "Rio Mythology" also retired due to age and injuries, the situation for Cai Bin was more difficult than before, which seemed to return to the days when the Chinese women's volleyball team began to play the world from the trough. Investigate newcomers, form a team, grind the lineup, establish the style of play, and the Chinese women's volleyball team, which restarted after the epidemic, is striving for the opportunity to grow in the team in a short time.
Not only is there no Lang Ping, but Nagoya does not have Zhu Ting, the core force that the Chinese women's volleyball team has relied on the most in the past two Olympic Games. After participating in the Italian league, he did not return to Cai Bin on the grounds that "he needs more time to recover his wrist, his current state of fitness and injury, the amount of training that is not suitable for the national team and the intensity of the game". This means that since the Tokyo Olympics, the star of the Chinese women's volleyball team has not worn the national shirt to fight for the country.
Without Zhu Ting, the attention of the Chinese women's volleyball team naturally fell by half. The first star who has won almost all the honors in the world volleyball world and MVP Harvester brings to the Chinese women's volleyball team the same energy as Messi is to the Argentine men's team, Cristiano Ronaldo and the Portuguese men's team. Her absence from the Women's World Volleyball League is a mixed blessing for the Chinese women's volleyball team. Without her, the team has no first weapon to win, and the young players have lost their run-in and learning with her, and the team's influence is not the same as before. But it is also Zhu Ting's absence that gives young players more opportunities to exercise, so that they can be relied on in the competition, open-minded, and grow at the speed of light.
Zhu Ting's non-participation does not mean that she does not serve the country
Multiple conjectures should stop
The controversy over whether Zhu Ting will still play for the country has been heard on the Internet, and since she ended her Italian league journey, the discussion of the "pan-circle" of the women's volleyball circle has never stopped. Many people think they represent the truth, but the truth is that maybe they never came close to the truth. Whether it is the volleyball association, the national team or the story behind Zhu Ting will be revealed to the world in the future, but it is certain that with Zhu Ting's professionalism and patriotism, she will definitely have a moment to play for the country.
After all, the current Zhu Ting is not a fledgling young player with a long body, and the age of 28 makes her inevitably accumulate injuries in years of high-intensity fighting. She is no longer the god of war who can still play even if she hurts her foot, she needs to recuperate, she needs to cushion her body to maintain a high-level career. Therefore, let go of those suspicions and arguments and give Zhu Ting time.
Even though the new army created by Cai Bin is eye-catching, this team still needs a person like a sea god needle who can turn the tide at critical moments and send powerful shells to various opponents. Played for the country for 9 years, 227 official national team matches, contributed 3483 points, this is Zhu Ting's past report card, her importance to the team is also self-evident. This is the unique value and influence of a star.
Zhu Ting's commercial value development has declined, how to maintain it?
Before Gu Ailing's strong rise, Zhu Ting firmly held the position of "first sister" of Chinese female athletes. When the "2020 sCSI Global Active Sports Stars Business Value List TOP20" was announced, Zhu Ting ranked 6th, the highest ranking among active players. In front of her are Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi and others. It can be seen that after the Chinese women's volleyball team started the market-oriented reform at that time, Zhu Ting had commercial value that no other domestic athlete could match, and after Rio and before Tokyo, she was regarded as the new leader of Chinese sports.
After all, playing for a European giant, a huge professional annual salary. Since the beginning of the Turkish league, Zhu Ting's annual salary has risen with her queen-level performance, from 1.1 million euros in the first season to 1.35 million euros. Joining the Scandicci women's volleyball team, the other party fancy not only her football skills, but also the extensive Chinese market behind her.
In addition to her annual salary, Zhu Ting also followed Yao Ming's example of playing in the NBA and had a professional international brokerage team. Her Italian agent is one of the top agents in volleyball circles. In the years after the coronation of the women's volleyball team in Rio and the creation of mythology, she won several high-value endorsements for Zhu Ting. At the Tokyo Olympics, a total of 30 companies became sponsors of the team, many of which went to Lang Ping and Zhu Ting.
Among Zhu Ting's personal sponsors, Under Armour, Google, SPD Bank Credit Card, Autohome, Jiawo, etc. are all considered the leaders of Chinese and foreign brands. After Tokyo, the sponsorship boom of women's volleyball faded, and the Chinese women's volleyball team changed its exclusive business development agency. Although Zhu Ting, who has been playing overseas, continues to maintain a high performance on the field, and although the agency is still stable, the commercial development of relevant individuals has fallen from the peak of her and the Chinese women's volleyball team, although this is also difficult to escape the fact that the current economic background is sluggish. A sports marketing expert said that Zhu Ting's current task is to arrange reasonably, adjust her body, and continue to bloom as a queen on the field where she is more needed, "Think about the second half of Yao Ming's career, too many games beyond his physical tolerance, resulting in the premature end of his career." For Zhu Ting, she still has the bus space to continue her career shining, and with the maturity of the Chinese women's volleyball team and herself, her commercial value will be developed in the long run. ”
In 2021, Zhu Ting also filed a lawsuit with the local court in Henan, demanding that the five defendants be held criminally responsible for defamation, apologize and compensate for relevant property losses, which shows that the hostile online environment also troubles Zhu Ting. In the golden period after Rio, Zhu Ting's business cooperation on her personal social platform never stopped, and the last time she published business cooperation was back in October 2021.
The best way to maintain business value is on the field, whether it's the professional field or the national team. Although it is almost the second half of her career, as long as Zhu Ting can return healthy in the next national team competition, let the outside world see her irreplaceable status and performance, and continue to play a highlight in the overseas market, her personal level of business development will still have considerable room for operation.
Give time to the Chinese women's volleyball team and time to Zhu Ting.
The picture in this article comes from Xinhua News Agency