China has a plan. Your president, Xi Jinping, loves football. And now the country has a clear goal for its women’s team: be in the top eight by 2025 and organize the 2031 World Cup by running for the title. What’s your roadmap? Innovation, design, talent attraction and funding to train its players abroad. Alibabathe powerful virtual trading platform, It already supports the project with 139 million euros.
Since the Asian giant’s women’s team started kicking the ball in 1984, she has become continental champion twelve times: three at the Asian Games and nine more at the Asian Cup, most recently in February.
Globally, the greatest successes of the women’s team did not go beyond two runners-up, an Olympic and a World Cup, in the glorious 90s of the last century.
After that start of nearly two decades of crossing the soccer desert, the future is coming in a different way.
The plan to achieve supremacy
To continue with the growth developed in recent years within football in general, China presented a project in October to focus part of these efforts exclusively on the women’s sector.
The ten-year planwhose main claim is the organization of the 2031 World Cup in Chinese territory, has agreed with various organizations, such as the Ministries of Education, Finance or the Chinese Football Association (CFA, acronym in English).
Before 2025 they want to be in the top eight in the ranking World Cup 2023 is in the Paris Olympics 2024with the idea of reaching the top four places in the same competitions before 2030, to reach the aforementioned tournament of 2031 as clear contenders for the title.
At the same time, they intend to implement an access rule to the Chinese Super League where every club that wants to participate must have its own women’s team in order to help professionalizing women’s football.
Giving priority to physical exercise and following the dubious example of “success” in men’s football are the controversial aspects to be highlighted in the set goal of innovating the concept of training, as well as wanting to “import” talents with international competitions on Chinese soil and finance the “export” of Chinese players to foreign leagues.
a shower of millions
The strategy presented immediately after the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (PCCh), where celebrated football fan Xi Jinping was re-elected for an unprecedented third term among his predecessors, does not present economic data to accomplish his goals.
But it would be expected to take advantage of the support budget launched by the technology alipaybelonging to the giant Alibaba, with its 1,000 million yuan (137 million dollars or 139 million euros) campaign for women’s football over ten years, which began to be used in 2019.
The 2020 numbers presented by the CFA, after investing the first 100 million yuan (13.7 million dollars or 13.9 million euros), showed a clear positive evolution, at least in a quantifiable area.
After 52 weeks, the training teams of young footballers went from 62 to 136, with an increase of 119%, with 2,995 future promises registered, after passing through 369 training centers distributed among primary, secondary schools and institutes.
A small amount invested compared to the 30 million yuan (4.1 million dollars or 4.2 million euros) that the women’s team pocketed when it proclaimed itself continental champion after the two goals last February.
“Please pay twice as much bonuses to the women’s soccer team as to the men’s!” He wrote. Huang Jiang Xianga famous Chinese football commentator, on his Weibo account – equivalent to Twitter, censored in China – after the action of the national team.
The results, above all
The project also emphasizes the need to create an environment and a football culture in women’s society that allows for the achievement of the set goals.
In other words, reaching those who have nothing to do with the privileged who aspire to represent the Asian giant with the colors of the national team.
“They must learn to have fun and not just think about winning”highlighted in EFE Paolo Maggiorethe organizer of the Beijing Women’s International Championship, which has as many teams of foreign players as there are Chinese, as the biggest problem facing Chinese women’s football.
A point of view shared by Xu Zibin, Chinese coach of three women’s amateur teams in the aforementioned competition, as well as two university teams from the capital. “Some girls are learning to enjoy a sporting event for the first time in their life. It’s a whole new world that has opened up for them, “she said.
Xu added: “The outdated social status of women makes women’s sport nothing more than a macro strategy for Olympic medals, which means few women play a sport, especially those that are difficult to master or require multiple players to play. . team up” .
By Guillermo Benavides Moine, of the EFE agency.
Source: Clarin
