They, in the face of adversity, have carved out a way to survive.
Even if the sky is cloudy, rain is flying, but when the Beijing women's soccer team completed the mission of the National Games preliminaries, embarked on the way home, head coach Yu Yun heart of the heavy stone finally fell to the ground, that the tense mood is also relieved.
This is the third time this year that Yu Yun has led the team back to Beijing. In the first half of the year, the team spent almost the entire time out of town in order to prepare for the preliminaries of the National Games and the Women's Premier League, including the Chinese New Year, which was also spent in Guangdong.
During this six-month journey, Beijing women's soccer team not only faced continuous hard work in preparation and competition, but also experienced many challenges.
Fortunately, in the preliminaries of the Women's National Games that ended on June 7, the Beijing women's soccer team broke through from the seemingly hopeless "Group of Death" and grabbed the key "lifesaving straw".
At the moment of the successful breakthrough, the girls of the Beijing Women's Football Team were in tears, even the experienced veterans Wang Fei, Gu Yasha and Ma Xiaoxu could not help but cry. Equally moved was head coach Yu Yun, whose tears included both joy and the pain he had endured over the past six months.
In February, we reported on the struggles facing the Beijing women's soccer team.
As Beijing Women's Soccer prepares for the arrival of the 2021 season, the team's investor, Beijiang Group, informed the team that the previously agreed upon investment of 80 million dollars has been fully invested, and that it will not continue to invest in the new season.
Half a year later, the Beijing women's soccer team is still unable to find a new sponsor. It is in this difficult situation that Yu Yun and his team have carved out a way to survive.
In the meeting with Coach Yu Yun, the first impression was that he was much slimmer than before.
Two years ago suffered from "SAPHO syndrome" is still recurring, recently Yu Yun said: "Recently better, a while ago when playing the game, can not sleep at night, the whole body string pain."
The Beijing women's soccer team spent most of the first half of the year out of town preparing and competing. on January 2, the team departed for Shunde, Guangdong to prepare for the tournament, and on February 2, they moved to Sanshui, Guangdong, where they spent New Year's Eve.
March 2, the team went directly to Kunming to prepare for the game and the competition, until the beginning of April to end the long more than three months of "wandering", back to Beijing.
On May 2, the team traveled to Kunming to participate in the first stage of the Women's Super League, and returned to Beijing in the middle of the day to prepare for two weeks before heading to Foshan to participate in the Women's National Games Qualifier.
"Being out there for three months is the longest time ever, and last year it was just over two months for the closed conference women's super league." Yu Yun said.
The difficulty of the actual conditions also made the period extraordinarily long.
Due to the loss of investor sponsorship, Beijing women's soccer players and coaches lost more than 70% of their income without winnings and training fees, and only this part of the base salary of the Xiannongtan Sports School.
"The base salary is a little more, like the old players estimate that it is only six or seven thousand dollars a month, and get their hands on five or six thousand, and the young players are going to be even lower. Like Ma Xiaoxu is not the first Nongtan sports school system, this half a year a penny wages are not." Yu Yun said.
It's really brutal for players who eat their youth and makes it a lot more difficult for Yu Yun to lead the team.
Although the departure of a number of key players has brought about an impact on the team in terms of strength, the stability of the spiritual level is more important. The good thing is that in the past six months, the team's spirit has not been dissipated, but rather the more frustrated, the more courageous.
The preliminaries of the National Games women's soccer program, the Beijing women's soccer team fell into the "group of death" with Jiangsu, Henan and Guangdong, the team has always been the most difficult grouping.
Yu Yun clearly remembers the day of the draw: "It was April 13, China's women's football and South Korea's women's football Olympic qualifying round before the second round of matches for the draw, when I was leading the team in training, they sent this message over, I looked at this is indeed very unsatisfactory, it is a lower draw."
In the last National Games, the Beijing Women's Football Team finished eighth, so this time it was designated as the third-ranking team, increasing the probability of entering the "Group of Death".
In the group where the Beijing women's soccer team is located, Jiangsu is the first-ranked team, with six international players in the midfield and backfield, namely Ma Jun, Yao Lingwei, Wang Xiaoxue, Zhai Qingwei, Li Mengwen and goalkeeper Peng Shimeng.
Guangdong, on the other hand, is a relatively strong team in the fourth gear, with four international players, including Luo Guiping and Lin Yuping, and also occupies the advantage of hosting this group. The second-ranked Henan team has international player Lou Jiahui.
Of the four teams, only the Beijing women's soccer team does not have an active international player, while Ma Xiaoxu and Zhang Linyan, two of the main players, did not receive arbitration until May 15, the deadline for registration, and finally confirmed that they could play for the Beijing women's soccer team.
Until then, Ma Xiaoxu hadn't played a game for the team, and Zhang Linyan had returned to Beijing temporarily before the Games.
A less-than-stellar fate has added insult to injury for the struggling Beijing women's soccer team.
Once they don't make it to the main round of the Games, it will be a bigger blow to the Beijing women's soccer team. As far as Yu Yun remembers, Beijing women's soccer team has never missed the main round in the history of the Games.
"Trying to survive, there's even less people to pay attention to if the results are poor." Yu Yun's words were painful to say, but this was the harsh reality.
Yu Yun and his coaching staff have formulated a strategy for this National Games qualifier, which in a nutshell is to fight Guangdong to the death on the basis of taking Henan in the first match.
"At that time, the coaching team's judgment was that as long as normal play is not unexpected, the decisive battle is the third round against Guangdong." Yu Yun said.
By the time we got to the All-Conference preliminaries, the process was indeed the same as predicted.
Beijing Women's Soccer first won the first round 1:0 against Henan, while Jiangsu was 1:0 against Guangdong. In the second round against Jiangsu, Beijing women's soccer team rotated three players and finally lost 0:1.
The game is a day apart, and even if we win against Jiangsu, if Guangdong wins against Henan in the second round, if we don't beat Guangdong in the final game, we may not be able to get out of the line," he said.
"No matter what, the final game against Guangdong is a decisive battle. Even though we are pushed to the brink, we can control ourselves. And we have five veteran players who have played in the Olympics and the World Cup, so we have a lot of experience, so this kind of competition is nothing."
In the final match against Guangdong, Beijing women's soccer team must win the competition to get out of the line.
"I felt it was in the cards before the game in practice because Guangdong was a little nervous because no one was talking from the time they were doing their preparations." Yu Yun said.
When it came to the competition, the process went surprisingly well.
The Beijing women's soccer team scored just 1:30 into the game, and the team ended up keeping this advantage strong and successfully out of the game.
"After the match I told the team that I really believe there are more important things in this world than money." Recalling the scene, Yu Yun's eyes reddened a bit.
"Looking back, the strength of all four forces in this group is actually very close, we played three games and scored a total of two goals, one from a free kick and one from a penalty kick."
"Guangdong scored a penalty kick in three games, Jiangsu scored a free kick from Guangdong in the last minute of the first game of the list, and scored a sports goal in the second game of the kicking of our team. The process was all very tough."
"It's also a bit of luck, it's called placing death before life." Yu Yun sighed.
After the end of the National Games preliminaries mission, Yu Yun has a rare moment of respite. These days he took on the task of transporting his children to school, "Guilt for the child is still more, because our vacation and the child's vacation does not match, so this time back to peace of mind to transport the child, do a little bit of responsibility, but also a rare enjoyment."
In August, Yu Yun will lead the team to play in the Women's Premier League, and in September, she will set foot on the women's football field of the National Games.
Although the road ahead is still unclear, but now the Beijing women's soccer team, after the difficulties of the preliminaries of the National Games, there is a little hope and running.
However, the long-term "bare running" for a work team is not a long-term solution. I hope that the Beijing women's soccer team can eventually find sponsors as they wish, this unit, worth it.
