The majesty of men's soccer and the bravado of women's soccer have traditionally intertwined on the soccer field.
Envisioning a gender flip, with women leading the men's team and women at the helm of the women's soccer team, would such a scenario be possible for anyone in the top flight?
She said, "For me, whether I'm leading men's or women's soccer, it's all the same, it's all about interpreting soccer by playing it, it's not essentially the same."
Six years ago, 28-year-old Chan Yuen Ting, who led the Oriental Dragon Lions men's soccer team to the Hong Kong Premier League title, became the first female coach in the world to lead a men's soccer team to win a top league championship. In the same year, she was honored as the AFC's Best Female Coach and was selected as one of the world's top 100 women in 2016.
Now, Chen Wanting has unloaded the glory of the past and stepped on the stage of the top league once again, this time, she will meet the Women's Super League and face a dynamic and vibrant team - Jiangsu Women's Football Team.
Facing a brand new team, Chen Wanting ushered in the debut of her top league women's soccer team and the start of her coaching career. 33 years old, what kind of new feelings does she have for this young team? What are her future goals?
Bleacher: 2022 Women's Super League, after the first stage (first 5 rounds of the league), the team finished 2nd in the league, are you satisfied?
Chan Yuen Ting:
The team is growing and improving and I feel very happy and satisfied. But the league is long and every round is crucial, I hope to take all three points in every game and move towards the goal of top five in the league.
Bleacher: Last season's runner-up and now in second place, why set the target so low?
Chan Yuen Ting:
This was the expectation of most of the team. When we met the day before the league opened, I suggested a way for everyone to write down their goals and the team's goals, with the team's unified goal being anonymous. The coaching staff went back and did the math, and some players settled on the championship, some on relegation, and over 80% of the players expected the team to be top five.
The fact that this goal was voted for by everyone means that it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to work towards it. It's second in the league now, and it's only just begun, so we'll see how it goes after 15 rounds.
Bleacher: Taking over Jiangsu in March, the team is again the runner-up in last year's Women's Super League, once the division of the league champion, is there much pressure?
Chan Yuen Ting:
There is pressure. Jiangsu Women's Soccer is very famous and it was an honor to accept the invitation and have the opportunity to work with them. In addition, this year, we have had some key players leave the team (Wang Xiaoxue, Yao Lingwei, Peng Shimeng), and the team is generally rejuvenated. Personally speaking, as a coach, no matter what time of the year, I can't get away from the pressure, no matter whether last year's result was the first, second or third, the most important work for me is to do a good job at the moment, and bring the team to the best this year.
Bleacher: So how much of the team's potential do you think is being realized now?
Chan Yuen Ting:
This is hard to calculate, I would expect 50%.
Bleachers: it feels so low.
Chan Yuen Ting:
Setting it lower only means that the team has more room for improvement. Next phase two and three, expect the troops to improve even more. Now that I've been with the team for just over a month, 80% of my time has been spent in matches, training and breaks, I haven't had enough time yet, to pass on my soccer philosophy to the players. I need a little more time and expect the training and intervals to be a little longer after that to play the kind of soccer I want to play.
Bleacher: So you took over for a month or so and were you busy with the game?
Chan Yuen Ting:
Yes. Like I arrived at the team shortly after going to the National Championships in Kunming and made my debut 2 days later. Frankly there wasn't much time to make adjustments, and after the tournament I returned to Nanjing for a week's rest before coming to Haikou to participate in the Women's Super League. During the week in Nanjing, I talked about some offensive and defensive transition stuff.
Although there was not enough time to train, the tournament showed the players in their truest form. They have their own characteristics, interests and weaknesses, which I collected and then I was able to tailor my coaching to each player's characteristics and make a detailed division of labor, allowing them to play better on the field. After 6 games in the tournament, I have gotten to know the players very well.
Lookout: the first round of the Women's Super League, look at your first six U21 players, on the contrary, like Xu Huan, Wu Chengshu and Li Mengwen and other international players are sitting on the bench, why this organization?
Chan Yuen Ting:
Because after coming back from the Asian Cup, they need to rest and recover, in Nanjing, after the heart rate belt test and my observation, I was able to understand their real-time condition, at first let them start to play the full 90 minutes, which is not very reasonable, need to give a certain amount of recovery time.
Bleacher: Indeed, like the national player Wu Chengshu waited until the third round of the debut, the situation is getting better and better, scored 4 goals in 5 games, temporarily ranked first in the domestic scorer list; at the same time, the team's junior Ou YiYao also has 3 goals, how do you think of the performance of the two of them?
Chan Yuen Ting:
Before I coached the Jiangsu team, I knew Wu Chengshu was a player who was very good at seizing chances in front of the goal, and I used to witness her ability on TV, both in the national team and in the club. After coming back from the national team, she trained with the team for only two weeks, and already showed me a very excellent goal-scoring ability and sense of goal, in short, she will be a very important player for us.
Next is Ou Yi Yao ('01), from the national championship in Kunming, her attitude in training and competition is surprising, her creativity in front of the field, her cleverness, initiative and aggressiveness in offense are very good. 3 goals in 4 rounds of competition, I am happy for her.
Bleacher: In these few games of the Women's Super League, I observed a few details, one is that when you are shouting with your players, in fact, sometimes you are not too fluent in Mandarin, and you will also pop out a few Cantonese phrases, which will affect your communication?
Chan Yuen Ting:
It's true that sometimes I lose my tongue or the players don't understand me after I've finished speaking. But I told them, if I lose my tongue, please tell me and teach me how to pronounce this Chinese better. Interestingly, the players said that they may have been with me for a while, and now they are turning into Hong Kong Poppers themselves (hahaha~).
I'm still learning this Mandarin, and I feel quite a bit better about myself than I did before, I don't specifically practice it, I just sometimes write down some words into my phone if I can't remember them, so practicing over and over again might help. Like I kept mispronouncing a word before, "embarrassed." I can't pronounce this word correctly, but now I'm slowly getting better at pronouncing it, don't you think? (Smiling face~)
Bleachers: During the game, when the players are going to the bench to serve the ball, you will always bring a bottle of water on the ground to the players, and you have already unscrewed the cap. When a player is about to serve a ball to his team's bench during a game, you will always take a bottle of water on the ground and give it to the player, and you have already unscrewed the cap.
Chan Yuen Ting:
Maybe it's a habit of mine, it's important for me to hydrate the players. Especially in Haikou, the climate is so hot it is even more important to replenish supplies. This is before I take the national youth U16 when I saw the Japanese team every game to put a dozen bottles of water arranged in a circle, convenient for players to drink. Competition in Thailand that will, for example, opponents injured, the Japanese coach will be the first time to let them replenish water. If this kind of work is right, then it should be learned, and I will try to pass on this kind of thing as much as possible.
Bleacher: So are you considered a detail freak?
Chan Yuen Ting:
Maybe. When I was learning how to be a coach, one of the most common phrases I heard was, "Detail makes perfect." There are a lot of good coaches out there, both in the world and domestically. Often times, the final few teams are about as competitive as they can be, so which coach can do a better job?
Winning or losing may be a matter of millimeters. Some people may think that this little bit is not important, but it is very important to me. I will tell the players that the scenario you face is completely different when you pass the ball at the first moment and when you pass it after stopping the ball. Don't underestimate the ball out of bounds, sometimes a quick pass can lead to a goal (or even a score), and that's probably what some teams do well, and details like that need to be learned.
Bleacher: This year is your first time coaching a women's team in the top league, how is the Women's Super League different compared to previous years when you took the Women's B, National and Men's teams?
Chan Yuen Ting:
In the men's soccer team, when I was coaching at Orient When I was coaching at Orient, some of the players were perhaps even older than me, and most of them knew what they had to do and how to adjust their condition, and were very experienced. As a coach, all I have to do is to make technical and tactical adjustments for each game.
The national young U16 and women's B is a bit like, female players are very small, I have to make a balance between results and growth, more to give the players space to grow, the pressure is not so big as the women's super.
The Women's Super League is a task force, and what is needed is immediate results, and this is nothing to speak of, so I will put more pressure on the troops. And I feel that the Women's Super League is a very good platform, in addition to Wuhan team's strength is very outstanding, the other troops are very competitive, win or lose unpredictable, very intense.
Bleacher: In the 2022 Women's Super League, your past coaching experience and honors (the best female coach in Asia in the past) is undoubtedly the brightest one, compared to other coaches, what are your strengths, and where are your weaknesses?
Chan Yuen Ting:
Frankly, I don't think I'm the best one. After arriving at the Women's Super League, I felt that many of the teams were playing well. Every head coach of the Women's Super League team, facing such an intensive schedule, everyone worked very hard and showed up with great competition content.
Maybe or maybe it's because there aren't many female coaches, and I count myself as one of them. The advantage should be that female coaches have a bit of an advantage in communicating with female players; secondly, I am relatively young (33 years old), but of course there are good and bad things about being young. Being young means having the opportunity to do more, and on the other hand, it means being inexperienced, which I need to learn from other coaches.
Bleacher: It is understood that you in the last year before the appointment of Jiangsu team manager, but also participated in our women's soccer team manager of the competition, and then fell short of the election said that they are still a distance from the position, specifically which is the distance?
Chan Yuen Ting:
First, last year I have not coached the Women's Super League, do not understand the level of the task force women's football, the domestic women's football development, the characteristics of the main players do not have a deep understanding. The national team's 20 to 30 players, I basically did not work together, although I have seen the Women's Super League, but with the real total after the understanding there is still a long way to go.
Secondly, China's women's soccer team has a series of big competitions afterward (Asian Cup, Asian Games, World Cup), and these important competitions require a certain degree of competition experience for young coaches. Although I have led different troops and participated in a number of competitions, but the lack of experience in the World Championship, but also need to build up a thick and thin.
Bleacher: So what are your goals regarding yourself coaching wise for the next 5 to 10 years?
Chan Yuen Ting:
I'm looking forward to coaching at a higher level, like the Euroleague, in both men's and women's soccer. Anyway, the soccer played is the same, just your training methods will be different. European soccer has been pulled away from Asia has a distance, like I usually love to watch the English Premier League, Manchester City, Liverpool's coach (Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp) I love, you will see them every game, for different opponents will be used in different arrangements, which is worth my study to learn the local.
The second was the expectation that I would make it to the World Cup.
The World Cup is not only a player's wish, but also a coach's wish, and it's also a big wish for me. If one day I can stand on the stage of the World Cup, then there is no regret in my life.
