Looking back at 2023 |If Chinese football wants to bottom out, it must first find out where the "bottom" is
Editor's note: 2023 is about to pass, looking back at the Chinese sports world, we have countless excitement and surprises, as well as endless depression and regret. Victory and defeat affect our nerves, but victory and defeat are not the only true meaning of sports, there are still so many people and things in the sports world that we can't forget.
After Shandong Taishan team suffered a complete defeat but was lucky to qualify for the AFC Champions League knockout round, Chinese football is approaching the end of the 2023 season. After an extraordinary 3 years, Chinese football continues its weakness in 2023. The overall record of the national team on all fronts is still unsatisfactory, the Chinese men's football team defeated the South Korean team 0-3 at home in the world preliminaries, and the Chinese women's football team suffered a "1-6" defeat in the World Cup group stage against England and missed the round of 16 for the first time, and it is a dream of the Paris Olympics. In fact, before answering this question, we must first figure out where the "bottom" of Chinese football is.
2023 is widely regarded as a big year for football. During this year, Chinese football has been in a busy state from beginning to end. Generally speaking, the success of a country's football development is mainly judged by the performance of their national teams. For the performance of the Chinese national team this year, in fact, whether it is an industry practitioner or an ordinary fan, they can make a more accurate prediction, or even a non-difference prediction.
Among the national teams, the Chinese women's football team undoubtedly carries the most expectations this year. This is because in the Women's Asian Cup in February last year, the Chinese women's football team regained the championship after 16 years, which seems to give people hope for revival. However, industry insiders who are familiar with the development trend of Asian women's football are aware of the fact that the Chinese women's football team did not encounter the Australian team on the way to the championship, and the North Korean women's football team was also absent. As a result, in the World Cup, where the technical content and confrontation level are much higher than those of the Asian Cup, the backwardness of the Chinese women's football team has been highlighted, and the score of "1 to 6" is even more dazzling.
I have to say that the Chinese women's football team's failure to win the World Cup and the dream of the Paris Olympics are not beyond the scope of football laws. Like the men's football team, the Chinese women's football team needs to re-examine itself after losing the halo of the Asian champion. In the context of the team's lack of major competitions to play in the next two years, the development focus of the national women's football team has shifted to the national youth women's football team to impact next year's U20 World Cup. On their way to impact, they will inevitably encounter the "roadblocks" Japan and North Korea, and it is self-evident how difficult it is to advance.
Compared with the women's football team, the Chinese men's football team has more slots, and even their repeated defeats are rarely new, so that when the national football team defeated South Korea by 3 goals in the first home game of the round of 36, the fans did not show too much frustration. "The final stage of the qualifiers is actually our World Cup", this is the exclamation of a senior reporter after the end of the Sino-Thai match. In fact, the Chinese men's football team has previously entered the top 12 of Asia twice in a row, and both the team and the Chinese Football Association are relieved. As for the ticket to the World Cup finals, everyone knows that it is an unattainable luxury. From this point of view, it is also more pragmatic for the national football team to lock the goal of the Asian Cup early next year to "enter the top 8", that is, to tie the record of the previous competition.
But Chinese football in 2023 is not without its merits, because there have been some improvements in domestic professional leagues and youth training during the year. After the full resumption of the home-and-away system in professional leagues at all levels, a large number of fans returned to the stadium stands, and the professional leagues re-brought the fireball market in the way of football and cultural integration, which also saved some face for Chinese professional football, which was once seriously discredited due to unpaid wages and other chaos.
In 2023, the "Second Year" Youth Competition has made great efforts in the pursuit of quantification and quality improvement. After the Chinese Football Association and the Chinese Football Federation Preparatory Group successfully relaunched the club U21 league last season, they added two echelon leagues for the club's U17 and U15 age groups this season, creating a high-quality competition platform for the club to supplement human resources, and also expanding the employment space for young players in professional clubs.
In October this year, the Chinese Football Association completed a new round of re-election through the member congress. In the context of a new round of anti-corruption storm in domestic football, the re-election of the Chinese Football Association is undoubtedly conducive to clearing the chaos for the Chinese football industry, and at the same time, it is more conducive to helping the domestic football industry return to the track of healthy and orderly development. The new leadership team of the Chinese Football Association with Song Kai as the core has made it clear that the youth training work will be the top priority in the next step, which also gives the outside world new hope for Chinese football.
In 2024, Chinese football may still be ill-fated. At present, under the promotion of relevant departments and the Chinese Football Association, the new season of domestic professional leagues is likely to usher in policy adjustments such as "liberalizing the transfer of clubs to other places". In the context of the existential crisis of most professional league clubs in the post-Jinyuan football period, the sports and football industry management departments have cooperated with local government departments to help those clubs in difficulty to tide over the difficulties with practical actions. In the coming year, the club cannot blindly rely on external support, even if they pass the life-and-death hurdle of access, they must do everything they can to play the leading role in self-help with a pioneering and enterprising heart.
Text/Beiqing Sports Xiao Yun