In the group stage, the Chinese women's soccer team lost to England with a score of 1-6, a result that not only made them miss the chance of advancing to the knockout stage, but also made the Clanging Roses feel the taste of homecoming for the first time in the Women's World Cup.
Failure is not not scary, what is scary is the trend behind the failure. Since the 1999 World Cup, China's women's soccer team's record has shown a clear downward trend. From the runner-up in 1999 to the top eight in 2003 to the top eight in 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 until the group stage exit in 2023, the downward trend is clear to see.
Looking back at history, the decline of China's women's soccer team is not a coincidence. A combination of internal and external factors led to this phenomenon. The core internal problem lies in the insufficient number of players. According to senior practitioners, the number of registered women's soccer players in China is only about 8,000, while England has as many as 1.8 million registered female soccer players. This means that we can only select 20-odd elites from the 8,000, while England can select suitable participants from the 1.8 million.
Obviously, with a narrow selection pool, it is difficult for our team to compete with teams with a rich selection pool such as England. Even so, we still need to explore why Sun Wen and Liu Ailing made it through the World Cup to the final.
Talking about the external reasons for the decline in the performance of women's soccer, we have to mention that as countries all over the world, especially European countries, pay more attention to women's soccer teams, the scope of selection has become wider and the competitiveness has risen. In contrast, our selection range is narrower and our competitiveness has naturally declined.
Fortunately, due to religious issues, women's soccer teams in West Asian countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran have struggled to develop, making the competitive pressure on Asian women's soccer relatively low. However, this has also exposed the disadvantage of Chinese women's soccer in the race to qualify for the Asian Cup and World Cup.
When it comes to the Chinese men's soccer team, we have to admit that the performance of the men's soccer team in recent years has not been satisfactory either. From the 1990s to the beginning of this century, the Chinese men's soccer team was still competitive in Asia, but nowadays, the situation of the national soccer team can be said to be deteriorating.
In terms of internal factors, men's soccer is also facing the problem of insufficient number of people playing soccer. In the 1990s, youngsters could be seen playing soccer everywhere in the streets, but today, there are very few young fans under the age of 20, and the atmosphere of soccer is not what it used to be.
In terms of external factors, the strength of competitors has increased significantly. Compared to more than 20 years ago, the men's soccer teams of Japan and South Korea have made tremendous progress, which makes it significantly more difficult for the Chinese men's soccer team to compete in Asia.
Overall, the soil of Chinese soccer has not improved and has even gotten worse. Both women's and men's soccer records are likely to decline further as time goes on. This certainly makes people sigh...
Against this backdrop, we can't help but ask: what will be the future of Chinese soccer?...
