Women's football can't change blood immediately! The Football Association affirmed that Shui Qingxia coached the team, and the Olympic preliminary round was the key to the assessment
In the 3rd and 4th place finals of the women's football team at the Hangzhou Asian Games on the afternoon of October 6, the Chinese women's team defeated Uzbekistan 7-0 again to win a bronze medal. Although the Chinese women's football team failed to win the gold as hoped, through the competition of this Asian Games, the team further recognized its own problems and the gap between the strong teams, and conducted a valuable training for the next Paris Olympic preliminary competition.
In this Asian Games, the Chinese women's football team participated in 5 matches. Among them, only the semi-final against Japan is a test in the strict sense. It was precisely in this crucial battle that the Chinese women's team lost 3-4 to their opponents, thus missing the opportunity to compete for gold. The Japanese team is dominated by young age players, and only one striker, Reina Chiba, is one of the Japanese national team's lineups for this year's Women's World Cup. The results of the match also objectively reflect the current gap between women's football in China and Japan.
Objectively speaking, since regaining the Asian Cup championship at the beginning of last year, the Chinese women's football team has returned to a correct development track. Taking advantage of this trend, more and more female players have gone abroad and landed in mainstream European leagues such as the Premier League, the Western Premier League, and Ligue 1. The girls' ability to compete in foreign leagues that lead the technological trend and pursue high speed and high confrontation will also indirectly enhance the hard power of Chinese women's football.
However, while the Chinese women's football team stopped the decline, it is difficult to achieve a short period of improvement in strength. In other words, when the Chinese women's football team started again, it had long been left far behind by the international women's football powers, and it took a lot of time and effort to make up for the gap. It is impossible to simply pursue the quantification of overseas projects to help the Chinese women's football team quickly improve its international competitiveness in a short period of time. Their defeat to England 6-1 in the World Cup and Japan's "second team" in the semi-finals of the Asian Games are telling.
There is nothing wrong with the Chinese women's football team "going out", but "cultivating internal skills" is also crucial. Take the North Korean team, which reached the final of this Asian Games, for example, which had missed international competitions for three years before this, but they made it all the way to the final at the Asian Games. This team has neither overseas training or warm-up opportunities, nor overseas players, and it is still possible to be so strong in this tournament because of its own preparation. To be precise, this team has maintained the same quality of training, which is also the guarantee that the whole team has shown strong competitiveness while maintaining the same technical and tactical style.
In the women's 1/4 final of this Asian Games, the average age of the North Korean team's starting players is 22.3 years old. The team's main goalscorer, Kim Kyung-young, who leads the tournament standings, is only 21 years old, while the oldest player on the team is 26-year-old defender Park Shin-jung. The average age of its rival South Korea's starters is 30. It is not difficult to understand that the North Korean women's football team is far ahead of their opponents in key statistics such as running, possession, threatening attacks, and clearances, and they eventually eliminated Asian Cup runner-up South Korea 4-1, which also benefited from their own vitality.
When it comes to personnel blood renewal, we have to re-mention the Chinese women's football team. The data shows that the average age of the Chinese women's football semifinalists is 27.3 years old, compared with 21.6 years old for opponent Japan. There are 7 members of the Japanese squad, or 1/3 of the players, who are under 20 years old. There are as many as 5 players over the age of 30 in the Chinese women's football team, of which Wang Shanshan and Zhang Rui, the two absolute main players, are 33 and 34 years old respectively, so it is not surprising that the Chinese women's football team was snatched by the opponent in the first half of the semifinals. In that match, the Japanese women's team, with its consistent technical style of football and the creativity of young players, defeated the slow-paced and conservative Chinese women's team.
So, will the Chinese women's football team immediately "change blood" after this Asian Games? The answer is no. One of the main reasons is that shortly after the Hangzhou Asian Games, the second phase of the women's qualification for the Paris Olympics will kick off at the end of this month. The Chinese women's football team will play against North Korea, Thailand and South Korea in this stage. Through the Asian Cup and Asian Games, the Chinese women's football team has further honed the main lineup of the new cycle, and at the same time has also made a thorough investigation of the situation of the Olympic preliminary competition, especially the North Korean team. The conclusion that "the competitive situation in the Paris Olympic Preliminary Round is tough" is also reached.
Compared with the emergence of talents from traditional Asian teams such as North Korea and Japan, it is difficult for the Chinese women's football team to find up-and-coming stars who can take on the role in the short term. There are only a few talented young players like Zhang Linyan, so in the context of the tight schedule of the three major competitions this year, it is difficult for the Chinese women's football team to achieve a significant "blood exchange" in the interval of more than half a month between the Asian Games and the Olympic preliminary round. In other words, the Chinese women's football team still needs to rely on this team with World Cup players as its team to attack the Paris Olympic preliminaries.
Although the Chinese women's football team was blocked by Japan from the women's football final of the Hangzhou Asian Games, the Chinese Football Association generally affirmed the performance of this team and its coaching and management team over the past year or so. However, this Olympic preliminary round will be an important time node for the Chinese women's football team and Shui Qingxia's coaching team. In other words, the results of the Olympic preliminary round are the most important indicators.
According to the plan, the Chinese women's football team will regroup in Xiamen on October 11. Since Shen Mengyu, Zhang Linyan and Li Mengwen have gone to Europe to participate in club events in advance, Wang Shuang and Wuzhigumula will also go to the United States and Australia to participate in their respective clubs' leagues after participating in the Asian Games, so the number of players participating in the initial training of this training is up to 20. The overseas players will then return to China before the international break window in accordance with FIFA regulations, which means that the Chinese women's football team will participate in the Olympic preliminary round with the full main team.
Text/Beiqing Sports Xiao Zhao