The Women's World Cup, which will begin in July, is getting closer and closer, and the Chinese women's soccer generals are now actively training and preparing for it.
In European women's soccer, the last game of the season has just ended. In the final of the Women's Champions League, Barcelona Women beat Wolfsburg 3-2 to win the trophy for the second time in the team's history.
With the Surge (www.thepaper.cn) In an exchange with reporters, Barcelona women's soccer player and England women's international Lucy Bluntsch confessed that it is club tournaments such as the UEFA Champions League that have allowed European women's soccer to make great strides in recent years.
With the joint efforts of various factors, European women's soccer is developing rapidly. For Chinese women's soccer, what is needed is to challenge and learn.
Lucy Bronze helped Barcelona women's soccer win the Champions League trophy.
European women's soccer, getting hotter and hotter.
The just-concluded Women's Champions League final made a great performance for all soccer viewers. After being down 0-2, Barcelona Women's Football made a superb comeback to win the trophy 3-2.
Aside from the ups and downs of the game itself, the enthusiasm of the fans was impressive. The game was played at the home stadium of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, which has a capacity of 35,119, and tickets sold out early.
It is an indisputable fact that women's soccer has become increasingly popular with fans in Europe in recent years. The repeated record-breaking attendance is the best proof.
In March 2022, Barcelona hosted Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Women's Champions League in front of 91,553 spectators, a record attendance of 90,195 for the 1999 Women's World Cup Final "China vs. USA".
Just a month later, that number was surpassed again when Barcelona Ladies beat Wolfsburg Ladies at home in the Champions League semi-final, with a new attendance record of 91,648.
A look at the current list of women's soccer attendance records shows Barcelona Women in the top three, but many other European clubs also have amazing crowd figures. For example, Arsenal women's home matches have a maximum crowd of 60,063, Eintracht Frankfurt women's home matches have a maximum crowd of 50,212, and Roma women's home matches have a maximum crowd of 39,454.
Even though, thanks to the club's policy, many fans watch the matches for free, the fact that so many fans are attracted to the stadium to cheer on the team already shows that the women's soccer team is becoming more and more important in the hearts of European fans.
Norwegian international Ingrid Engen is also popular in European soccer.
High-level tournaments stimulate overall development
Time and again, records for the number of women's soccer matches have been set in European club competitions, and in the eyes of European players, the high level of club competition is also a major reason for the rapid improvement of the overall standard in Europe.
Lucy Bronze, an England international who plays for Barcelona Women's Football, made the point in a remote interview with Punch Newspapers ahead of the Champions League final.
"In Europe there are competitions like the Women's European Championship where clubs from different countries play against each other. I think that's important and one of the unique things about women's soccer in Europe." She said.
"There are five to six high-level leagues [in Europe] competing for the most important Champions League title in European soccer, which not only improves the overall strength, but encourages each national league to raise its level, leading to an ever higher level of European national teams."
Chinese women's soccer players have also experienced the intensity of European women's soccer. Back in October 2018, Wang Shuang, who was staying at Paris Saint-Germain Women's Soccer at the time, scored in the first leg of the Champions League 1/8 final, creating the first goal by a Chinese player in the history of the Champions League.
Currently, Chinese women's international soccer player Li Mengwen is also playing for Paris Saint-Germain and has participated in the Champions League with the team "The intensity and pace of the European league is still very high, and I have been trying to adapt. After playing too much in Ligue 1 and the Champions League, my self-confidence will improve. If I meet a strong opponent in the future, my mindset will be more stable." She admitted in an interview.
The audience base for women's soccer in Europe is growing.
The key to continued investment in the club is continued investment in the club
European women's soccer is becoming more and more important in the world of women's soccer compared to the past, and such results are certainly not coming out of nowhere.
The level of women's soccer in Europe has risen in recent years as more and more European men's soccer clubs have become willing to invest resources in women's soccer - and it's not hard to see that the women's soccer clubs that are currently performing well in Europe are essentially well-known, with enough money to support the construction of well-known women's soccer teams.
The Barcelona women's soccer team naturally won the Champions League for the second time. According to Norwegian international Ingrid Engen, another Barcelona women's soccer player interviewed by Punch, the women's soccer team is provided with "the best facilities and the best training conditions".
"It's very important to be able to play for a top-flight team and have such good team conditions, which allows players to improve as much as possible."
In fact, the reality is that, except for a few giants willing to spend the money, many women's soccer teams are not as good as men's even in Europe - low wages, poor training facilities, games in small stadiums, and so on.
But using the Giants club as a benchmark, more and more teams are starting to keep pace. As Ingrid Engen puts it, "players want and demand better conditions." In order to attract players to form a more competitive squad, clubs must also commit resources.
National team and club development can go hand in hand
Positive cycle into fast track development
It is undeniable that clubs need positive incentives to continue investing in women's soccer. From this perspective, Barcelona Women's Football also sets a positive example.
According to data released by Deloitte, the fan-favorite Barcelona Women's Football Team became the highest-earning women's football club in the 2021-2022 season, with €7.7 million in revenue this season.
On this list, 12 women's soccer teams earned more than 1 million euros this season, including two women's La Liga teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid), one women's Ligue 1 team (Paris Saint-Germain), and one women's Bundesliga team (Bayern Munich).
The eight teams earning more than €1 million in the Premier League are Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and West Ham United.
Unsurprisingly, the countries where these higher-earning women's soccer clubs are based are essentially countries with strong established or emerging national teams. The development of national teams and clubs can be said to complement each other.
The development of clubs enhances the strength of the national team, and the progress of the national team in the international arena in turn stimulates the development of domestic women's football, which is undoubtedly a positive cycle - the England women's football team, which won the Women's Euro Cup for the first time in its history last year and is now developing rapidly in the domestic women's football league, is a typical case in point.
The development of European women's soccer has a lot to learn from Chinese women's soccer.
Chinese women's soccer needs to keep up
At the 2019 Women's World Cup, seven of the top eight are European teams. Facing the rapidly rising European women's soccer team, the Chinese women's soccer team is also facing a growing challenge.
As Sun Wen, a famous Chinese women's soccer player, said, "Many European teams now have the ability to stay focused for 90 minutes under high intensity and high confrontation. We need to work harder, which is both a pressure and a motivation."
"Modern soccer has less space, stronger confrontation and more speed, and there is still a gap between the domestic league in terms of offense and defense, physical confrontation and international high level." This is the reality that Sun Wen believes must be faced." Going to Europe to experience physical, mental, technical and tactical is a good attempt and an effective means."
Shui Qingxia, head coach of the Chinese women's soccer team, has also made it the team's goal to catch up with European powerhouses. For example, in terms of high speed and sprint distance, Shui Qingxia has asked players to improve from an average of about 300 meters per game to about 700 or even 1,000 meters for European teams.
"Today's European women's soccer team represents a higher level of women's soccer as a whole. From the speed of the transition between offense and defense to the degree of confrontation, the overall (level) of European teams is much higher than that of Asia." Shui Qingxia admitted.
In the upcoming Women's World Cup, the Chinese women's soccer team will face two European teams, Denmark and England, in the group stage and will have to win tough battles to advance to the group stage.
The team is making the best and most difficult preparations to meet the difficulties with unity in the face of a strong opponent.
