Within one day, Chinese women's football coach Shui Qingxia experienced two days of joy and sorrow. In the early hours of yesterday morning, Beijing time, she just won the AFC 2022 Best Women's Football Coach of the Year award, but last night, the Chinese women's football team missed the 2024 Paris Olympics ahead of schedule.
Last night, Group B of the second stage of the women's football Asian qualifiers for the Paris Olympics ended the third round of competition, and the Chinese women's football team drew 3-1 with the South Korean women's team in Xiamen and missed the third stage of the Olympic preliminaries. This is the second time in the history of the Chinese women's football team that after the 1 London Olympics, the women's football team has not participated in the Olympic women's football finals.
From winning the Asian Cup at the beginning of last year to failing to achieve satisfactory results in the World Cup, Asian Games, and Olympic preliminaries this year, why is the Chinese women's football team showing such an obvious downward trend? What has Shui Qingxia experienced in the past two years? What is going on inside the Chinese women's football team? All of this needs an answer.
There are many problems
In the three major competitions, the Chinese women's football team did not meet expectations in terms of performance indicators, and it was difficult to be satisfactory in terms of game content, especially in the Asian Games and Olympic preliminaries, most of the time they played like a plate of loose sand, lacking effective transmission of the ball, and rarely able to organize an effective attack. This year's women's team is not the same as the team that won the Asian Cup last year. None of the three major exams has clearly reflected the true strength of the Chinese women's football team, and only by facing this gap can the Chinese women's football team have a chance to catch up.
In this Olympic preliminaries, the lack of personnel is the number one enemy. As early as before the current training camp of the Chinese women's football team, the number one star Wang Shuang was not selected for the list due to injury, and her absence was also the biggest loss for the team with weak attacking power. In addition, Li Mengwen, a foreign player who returned to China, began to have a fever after returning to the team, and although she has been receiving infusion therapy, she still missed 3 group stage matchups; Wu Chengshu, who performed brilliantly in the first game against North Korea, also had a cold and fever a few days ago, and missed the second round against Thailand, and her fever subsided on the evening of October 10, which made the coaching staff extremely entangled, and after repeated evaluation, it was decided to let her start in the Sino-Korean game. The other two starters of the Chinese women's football team in the "battle of life and death" had a similar situation, Liu Yanqiu was still in a high fever the night before the game, and Zhang Rui's body did not fully recover.
In addition, due to various reasons, Tang Jiali and Xiao Yuyi, who had scored goals in the Asian Cup final to reverse the South Korean team, were not included in the Olympic preliminary list, and midfielder Zhang Xin was also absent, which made the Chinese women's football team almost absent most of the main force this time, making the team that is not dominant in Asia even worse. You must know that the Chinese women's football team was able to win the Asian Cup, and hard work, willpower and even luck accounted for a large factor, which also largely covered up the weakness of the team's lack of technical and tactical ability. In fact, in terms of technique and tactics, game rhythm, physical fitness, etc., the Chinese women's football team has been far behind by the world's first-class teams, and blindly emphasizing the spirit cannot make up for the huge gap in strength, and luck will not always be on their side. Li Jiayue, a former women's football international, said: "Nowadays, Japan's first-class Asian teams are much better than the Chinese women's football team in terms of running, passing, receiving, and switching. ”
Take the initiative to take responsibility
Failing to qualify for the Paris Olympics also means that in the next two years, the Chinese women's football team will not participate in international competitions.
After last night's game, Shui Qingxia also took the initiative to apologize: "I'm sorry I didn't win today's game, but the players showed a good technical and tactical level and style today, and the players really did their best, I thank them." From the bottom of my heart, I feel very sad and feel sorry for them, we have seen a lot of technical and tactical gaps and shortcomings, in fact, we are thinking about gaps and changes every day, and now we see that the changes are not good enough and not fast enough. ”
When asked whether she will continue to serve as the coach of the Chinese women's football team in the future, Shui Qingxia said that her future is "not easy to say", but no matter what, she hopes that the Chinese women's football team will get better and better, "In fact, in terms of results, we have not reached the initial goal, but through these games, more young players have been trained, and the outside world really sees that the Chinese women's football team can do better in terms of technique and tactics in addition to spirit, and can find the right path in the process of failure in the future." As for the future, it's hard to talk about it now. No matter what, I hope that the Chinese women's football team will get better and better, and I hope that these girls can really enjoy the happiness brought by football on the football field. ”
Reporter Li Yuanchun
Source: Xinmin Evening News