The Chinese women's volleyball team suffered three consecutive defeats in the group stage of the Tokyo Olympic Games, and there is only theoretical possibility to advance to the quarterfinals. The defending Olympic champion who retained the main framework also won the Women's Volleyball World Cup in 2019, why did his performance slip after just two years? What happened to the Chinese women's volleyball team? I believe that this is a question in the hearts of many fans, and some suggestions given by former Chinese men's volleyball team coach Wang Jiawei when he called An Jiajie, assistant coach of the Chinese women's volleyball team, seemed to point out the problem.
According to the Shanghai media "Oriental Sports Daily", Wang Jiawei, who has always paid attention to the Chinese women's volleyball team, made a one-and-a-half-hour phone call to An Jiajie, assistant coach of the Chinese women's volleyball team in Tokyo, mainly giving three suggestions: First, the deputy attackers should play a real cover role in the 3rd position. Second, the women's volleyball style is masculine. Third, we need to improve the quality of domestic leagues and improve the level of competition.
If Wang Jiawei's first two suggestions to the Chinese women's volleyball team are mainly from a technical and tactical point of view, then the third suggestion hits a soft underbelly in the development of Chinese volleyball, that is, the quality of domestic leagues needs to be improved. In fact, when the Chinese women's volleyball team won the championship at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, the Chinese Volleyball Association wanted to take the women's volleyball team to win the championship and further deepen the league reform. The volleyball league that has been running for many years has also been restructured into a volleyball super league, and the optimized schedule format, the temporary transfer system in line with the European professional volleyball world, the application of high-tech means such as Hawkeye, the popular All-Star Game, and the all-round intervention of a number of sponsors and live broadcasting platforms have made the volleyball super league present a new atmosphere.
However, after only two years, the Volleyball Super League was no longer in full swing. In order to give the national team sufficient training time, the domestic league made way for the national team, starting from the 2018-2019 season, the first stage of the league group stage was no longer a home-and-away double round robin format, but a conference system, and the original five-month schedule was shortened by a full month. At that time, the explanation given by the relevant person in charge of the row management center was: "In order to provide more training time for the national team, it is also convenient for the athletes' physical recovery and injury adjustment." In order to better prepare the national team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2019-20 season was compressed again. Affected by the epidemic, the Tokyo Olympic Games were postponed for a year, and last season's Volleyball Super League was held in a fully closed format, and it was only a little more than a month before it was hurriedly closed. The negative effects of the shrinking league schedule and lack of dynamism are obvious: the competition for the league championship is played out between 3-5 competitive teams all year round, the mobility of personnel is seriously insufficient, the high level of foreign aid is constantly lost, and the teams are uneven in echelon building and talent reserves.
The league cannot provide fresh blood for the national team, and the talent selection in the Chinese women's volleyball team model has become empty talk. Preserving the main framework of the Rio cycle is more of a no-holds-barred move. For the chinese women's volleyball players, in the case of a serious shortage of domestic league games and a low degree of fierce competition, the training they have undergone is insufficient, and the improvement of technical and tactical level cannot be talked about. In this case, the national team long-term training has become a way to do nothing, the national players through long-term training to make up for technical shortcomings, tactical run-in, and then through the participation in the World Women's Volleyball League to find a real combat feeling, to prepare for each annual international competition. This model was still valid until the 2019 Women's Volleyball World Cup, and the Chinese women's volleyball team won the championship with a total victory record, but it also covered up the problem of the shrinking league.
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic has made the world sports world have to press the pause button, but also disrupted the chinese women's volleyball team's preparation rhythm, although the long training in one period after another can make the team members completely sink their hearts to improve their technical shortcomings, but the training can not replace the game after all, for the latest changes in the world volleyball world and the emergence of new people from various countries, it is difficult for the Chinese women's volleyball team to fully grasp, coupled with the continuous shrinking of the league, it is not difficult to understand that the technical and tactical level does not rise but falls in the case of the long-term lack of actual combat confrontation.
Some people say that the league structure and professionalism in the United States are far less than in China, so why is their national team level in the forefront of the world? First of all, the American college league system is quite developed, and the NCAA league can be regarded as the cradle of American volleyball talent. Secondly, the national players of the American women's volleyball team are all over the world's top leagues. For example, the young American women's volleyball team of the Tokyo Olympic Games, who is not familiar with the Chinese women's volleyball team, received Thompson, and she played for the famous Isachibashi women's volleyball team in the Turkish league, serving as a substitute for serbian super receiver Boskovic in the team. In the U.S. women's volleyball team, Thompson's substitute Drus in the same position played for the Japanese V League champion JT Wonderful Women's Volleyball Team, and was the MVP of the V League. Under the impact of Thompson and Droos, the two rising stars, the original main receiver of the American women's volleyball team, Lowe, has retired and joined the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games Organizing Committee.
FIVB official website: The United States women's volleyball team defeated Brazil to win the world women's volleyball league three consecutive championships
Not only the national players of the United States women's volleyball team, but also the national players of Serbia, Turkey, Italy and other strong teams are playing in the world's top leagues, among which the Turkish and Italian leagues have become a stage where stars gather, in these two leagues, the top stars frequently flow, the competitive atmosphere is strong, and the level of competition is extremely high. The 2020-21 season of the Italian league and the Turkish league are from the beginning of September last year, until the end of March this year, if you count the Champions League, several European and American strong teams of the national players did not end their conquest in the club until May, and left them less than two months to prepare for the Olympic Games, in contrast, the Chinese women's volleyball team since the end of last year's domestic league, the cumulative time to prepare for the Olympic Games for up to 5 months, but the results of the first three games of the Olympic Games seem to indicate, It is obviously more effective to undergo a high-level league experience than to conduct long-term training.
Fivna Fidesan International Official Website: The Turkish women's volleyball team defeated Japan to win the bronze medal in the World Women's Volleyball League
Wang Jiawei highlighted this point in his exchange with An Jiajie, "The Italian league is not to say, in addition to football is volleyball, the popularity is very strong. Turkey, Poland, high quality leagues, high salaries to attract world stars, in the confrontation with the competition to learn from masculinity. People are training instead of races, double competitions a week, find problems immediately change, training and competition are closely integrated; we are still training instead of competition, closed training for three months, league attention is low, low intensity, and even talent is difficult to circulate. "If it weren't for Zhu Ting's wrist injury, the problem of the Chinese women's volleyball team would probably not have been exposed so thoroughly, after all, Zhu Ting is too important to the Chinese women's volleyball team's offensive and defensive system, but the Chinese women's volleyball team has only one Zhu Ting." Just imagine, if at this time we have a second Zhu Ting who plays in the Turkish women's volleyball team, and a third Zhu Ting who plays in the Italian women's volleyball team, then what will be the situation?
For the Chinese women's volleyball team, no matter what the result of the Tokyo Olympic Games, the pain of team replacement is inevitable, and it is difficult for the meritorious coach Lang Ping to lead the team to the Paris Olympic Games three years later, and Yan Ni and a group of 30+ veterans are also destined to bid farewell to this collective that has fought. What's next? Developing domestic leagues and sending outstanding young players to high-level leagues abroad should be the essence of the problem. Only by developing domestic leagues can we provide a platform for domestic volleyball talents to fully compete and fully flow, and can we reopen the "faucet" of sending talents to the national team; and in the case of the domestic league level is not enough to match the world's high-level leagues, sending outstanding young players out will be of great benefit to their broadening horizons and rapid growth.
Temporary defeats and setbacks are not terrible, but it can help Chinese volleyball recognize the reality and see the gap. The decline in the performance of the Chinese women's volleyball team should also arouse the attention of Chinese volleyball managers, while helping the team to seriously summarize the gains and losses, for the future development of Chinese volleyball, Chinese volleyball managers must also come up with practical solutions.