Zhang Linyan, the young soccer star, says of herself that she is still just a young player with insufficient power. When she receives praise, she will shyly cover her eyes with her right hand, with a big smile at the corner of her mouth. Facing the future, she is full of uncertainty in her mind, but firmly chooses to keep moving forward, striving hard on the road of soccer just to stand firm in the national team.
▲Exclusive Interview
women's soccer
Zhang Linyan: I wouldn't give up soccer even if I was given 10 million dollars. New Beijing News Exclusive
A salute went off and pink petals rained over the Mumbai Green.
On February 6, after 16 years, the Chinese
women's soccer
Once again standing on the Asia Cup winner's podium. Zhang Linyan, the tiny figure, leaned against the left corner of the team, jumping for joy with her teammates, waving the tiny trophy in her hand.
In stark contrast to her low profile was her outstanding performance in the final. After being 0:2 down, she came on as a substitute and was involved in all the goals.
In just six minutes, Zhang Linyan won a penalty kick opportunity and her teammates put the ball into the net; around the 12th minute, she made a header to completely turn the game around; in extra time, she made a silent pass with her teammates and the Chinese
women's soccer
The final was a 3:2 win. In this final, Zhang Linyan was awarded MVP, or Most Valuable Player.
Congratulations poured in from all quarters, including the British star
David Beckham (1975-), British midfield footballer
More people remember this dark-skinned, agile and courageous "little" player. More people remember this dark-skinned, agile and brave "small" players - only 1 meter 54 tall, just turned 21 years old, is the smallest player in the current national women's soccer team.
On the court, she's a player who was selected at the age of 12 for the China
women's soccer
The talented girl of the junior team; in the eyes of the initiation coach He Fei, she has been studying alone, and has been seriously injured but always insisted; the university coach Wang Changquan commented that she loves soccer, is self-disciplined and diligent, and has excellent mental quality.
For Zhang Linyan, she is still just a young player with insufficient power. When she receives praise, she will shyly cover her eyes with her right hand, with a big smile at the corner of her mouth. Facing the future, she is full of uncertainty in her mind, but firmly chooses to keep moving forward, striving hard on the road of soccer, just to stand firm in the national team.
The following is a blurb from Lynn Yan Zhang:
"Will you fight or not? Fight or not?"
I actually didn't play too well in the first few games of this Asian Cup.
In the first match against Chinese Taipei, I was the first player to start the match, and not long after the start, I was kicked down by the opponent in the penalty area, resulting in a penalty kick. Because of that, I got injured and was not in good shape throughout the game. How did I play like this? I was very sad and very unhappy with myself. When I started as a starter against Japan in the semi-final, I was still nervous.
When you participate in international events, you are representing China. It's a kind of honor, but the pressure is definitely much bigger than competing at home, not as comfortable and open as at home. That's where I'm not strong enough right now, I still have too little experience in big competitions and I need to improve more.
But it was especially fortunate that the coaching staff and my teammates' sisters didn't blame me. "It's okay Pippi, you're still young." "It's pretty good, now one game is better than the other." "Don't be nervous, take your time." ...... They were always so encouraging. At that time I was very mindful that I didn't do well enough, so for me these encouragements really helped.
Secretly, I was holding a lot of energy inside, but I'm not a very confident person. Because I had suffered a serious injury before, when I played badly, I always doubted myself: did I not do well enough? The coaches on the team, including Director Shui Qingxia, often told me to be more confident. Thank you to the coaching staff and my sisters for believing in me.
Before we left for this Asian Cup, the coaches have been telling us to relax our mindset, dare to fight and play with our spirit. Director Shui said that no matter what the result is, she will take the blame, but we have to have a goal to win the championship, not just for the ticket to the World Cup next year. Although Japan and South Korea are strong teams, but we also have the same strength, really play, it is not that who absolutely can win who.
Before the semi-finals, the water director showed us a little short movie with Lone Ranger playing in the background, and I hummed along because I felt that the lyrics fit the scene of the tournament at that time. Every time I listened to this melody, my blood was pounding and I wanted to go to the competition right away.
On the day of the final, we were down 0:2 to Korea in the first half. At halftime, Director Shui made an adjustment to the tactics, she encouraged us, told us to all wake up, told us that there was still time, don't think about anything, and play with the spirit that women's soccer should have.
"Will you fight or not? Fight or not?" The water guide asked us.
"Fight!" "Fight!" We replied.
In the 59th minute of the game, I came on as a substitute. I didn't think about it so much, and I wasn't as nervous as I had been in the previous games. I just thought that if you go up there, you have to fight and run more, and you have to go into other people's penalty areas more often. That's what anyone would do.
To be honest, I didn't expect to score a header after that, and I usually don't practice deliberately. It's not easy to play these games, and I'm still excited to make a small contribution to the championship.
This final happens to be during New Year's Eve, and the game was streamed live the whole time, so there should be a lot of people watching it. I've seen all the messages from netizens on my Weibo and under Shakeology. Some people said they decided to play soccer after watching our game, or let their daughters play soccer. Others said he had encountered difficulties, but the spirit of women's soccer infected him.
It is still meaningful to bring hope to people and make them pay more attention to women's soccer and join women's soccer. In fact, nowadays, there are not many people playing soccer in the country, and I also hope that we can infect more people to play soccer, boys and girls alike.
Love comes first.
I am from Jiangyou, Sichuan province, and my parents work outside all the time. after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, I studied in the boarding house of the Garden Primary School in Jiangyou city. At that time, the school had sports meets every year, and I basically won the first place in the events that the class teacher let me participate in, such as 100-meter track and field, standing long jump, and sometimes I played table tennis.
In 2009, when I was in third grade and jumped over 2 meters in the standing long jump, the soccer coach picked me to go to practice with my brothers and sisters who were three or four years older than me. At that time, I only knew that I had to go to practice every Saturday, but I didn't know anything about what practice was or what soccer was.
The main reason I was able to stick around and play soccer in the early days was because of my dad.
Dad is a fan, but he's a "fake fan". Sometimes he falls asleep watching the World Cup, but he'll keep going. But for an 8 year old, it's not just a matter of sticking around. At that time, soccer practice was on Saturday, and I just wanted to sleep in. So initially I was just tired and didn't want to go, but my dad made me go because he was scared of me, so I agreed to go.
At that time, the conditions were limited and we could only practice the basic skills on the basketball court. After playing for a month or two, I thoroughly enjoyed soccer. I was the youngest in that group of kids, and every time we ran with the ball in a game, I was always the fastest, thinking of competing for the first place; sometimes we even played a small game, and the moment of scoring a goal was so great ...... that I looked forward to Saturdays every day. But at that time I was still young and had no goals regarding soccer.
In 2012, during the second semester of fifth grade, it was the first time I made a decision about my future. That year, a soccer school in Guangzhou was recruiting students, and following my dad's advice, at the age of 10, I chose to go to Guangzhou by myself.
Before that I played basketball, table tennis, a little bit of everything, and after I left home for Guangzhou, my dad often called me and told me to stick with it. Being exposed to that kind of soccer atmosphere every day, I also understand that since I made the choice, I have to play well; since I decided to play well, I will go to a better place, and I want to go to the national team, which is also my goal and dream all along.
I also wrote a line in black and white on my desk that said something like "I want to be on the national team", which I wanted to use as a reminder to myself, but it was caught on TV, so I was especially embarrassed and felt like my little secret had been leaked.
In sixth grade, I attended a soccer school in Guangzhou, where I played soccer with young boys every day, woke up at 6:00 a.m., and didn't get off from study hall until 9:00 p.m. I learned a lot from playing soccer with the boys. Thinking about it now, I learned a lot from playing soccer with the boys. Sometimes when some boys messed with me, I would chase them and beat them up, and I guess that's how I practiced my speed.
People always ask, what has kept me going so far? I would say that love definitely comes first.
I did well in my cultural studies and was first in my class. The rest of the time, I thought about playing soccer all the time, and on weekends, I thought about grabbing the field, and as soon as I put the ball on the ground, I thought about winning. I was still the youngest in the team at that time, and as long as I beat the other older players, the whole team would be happy for me.
The school usually organizes a lot of matches, class teachers and parents will come to watch, the soccer field is crowded, we train hard and fight together, I feel very happy, happy in such a team. Many of my classmates who played soccer together at that time continue to play as hard as I do now, and we have grown up together, so these are the reasons for me to keep going.
If I was offered 10 million dollars to stop playing soccer, I wouldn't do it.
In the 13 years I've been playing soccer so far, while I've never wanted to give up, I can't deny that there will always be moments of self-doubt, especially after two serious injuries.
The first injury was on January 28, 2016, when I was 15 years old.
I was playing in the National Girls Soccer U-16 Championships at the time, and the game was down to the wire and we were leading. Logically, that ball didn't need to be chased again, but I thought I could and I did, except that the ball went through and I didn't, resulting in a fracture and dislocation of the ankle, injuring the ligaments and getting a plate.
The night of the surgery, once the anesthetic wore off, the pain came up. I cried all the time from the pain, and my mom stood guard over me and cried along with me.
My mom was naturally worried about me. During the three months that I was lying in the hospital on a hospital bed, she didn't go to work and took care of me every day, always urging me to stop kicking, saying that I was still young and my grades were good, so it was not too late for me to go back to school.
At that time, even the doctors thought that it would be difficult for me to play professionally again in my condition. Others said that there was once a player in the soccer academy who suffered the same injury as me and never recovered. I heard and remembered all these words, and I was definitely worried and my mood was inevitably affected. I often quarreled with my mom, but I always regretted it afterward. During those three or four months, my father didn't go out to work either. He took a bus from Jiangyou to the hospital in Chengdu every week to deliver soup to me. My heart ached for them.
At that time, every day I would count the days, how many days I had been injured, how long I had left to recover, as if it was engraved in my heart. Maybe it was a tacit understanding, my mom and dad compromised, they acquiesced to my persistence and didn't try to talk me out of it every day. In this way, I recovered step by step and recuperated for about a year.
The second injury came at the end of 2018 with a torn ACL in the knee. At the time, I didn't even know there was such an injury, and I didn't realize it was this serious until after the X-ray. I started crying again, but was afraid to tell my mom the truth, and only told her the next day when I couldn't hide it. When she found out, she cried for another night.
Then I went to Germany for three months to rehabilitate, and I would record videos every day to record the process of getting better, which was a kind of experience for myself, but that time was really hard. At first, I just wanted to train and recover properly, but I couldn't communicate with the locals, and it was just in time for Christmas and New Year's Day, and I was alone in the hospital, so the later I got, the more I was homesick.
The food is not used to it either. Sometimes my lunch consisted of two boiled eggs, a few potatoes, a little sauce and a little salad. It's fine once, but if I eat like this all the time, my "Chinese stomach" can't take it.
Going through this, I definitely have doubts about myself: is it incapable, will it affect the development 。。。。。。 But I didn't want to give up. Soccer takes up 80 or 90 percent of my life - every day is training, every day is research, and many things revolve around it. I don't know how to describe it, but I do spend a lot more time with it than I do with my friends and family.
If I were given 10 million dollars to stop playing soccer, I wouldn't want to. I've heard the saying that you can't make enough money in your lifetime, but there are only so many years left in your youth, so can 10 million dollars buy you a chance to go to the World Cup? I still want to work hard, make myself more capable, better against the elements, and gain more match experience. I want to get a foothold in the national team, play in the 2023 World Cup, get a good ranking, and reach these goals step by step.
Keep a normal heart.
In the national team, I am really the youngest. Surrounded by experienced sisters, I am more or less under pressure. But precisely because I'm the youngest, some of the pressure is dissipated - I'm just here to learn, what's so scary about that?
I can learn a lot from my sisters. For example, Sister Frost (Wang Frost), sometimes I inevitably make mistakes, but she never complains about impatience, but patiently encourages me instead.
Of course, my height of only 1 meter 54 is a disadvantage, which also requires me to think faster, get out of the ball faster, have better technique, keep running up, and don't let myself be confronted in a narrow range. Every game, I will intercept some important small fragments to save, to see if there is a better way to deal with, but also the opponents to deal with the details of the good saved to learn, so that the advantages of the better, the disadvantage of the hidden. This Asian Cup is no different.
After the game, a lot of my previous interviews were rehashed on Netflix and I felt silly watching them.
One of the images was the 2018 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, when I was still a member of the national youth women's soccer team and was interviewed in tears. We had a chance to win at that time, and it turned out to be very unfortunate that we still didn't make it out of the tournament. The thing that made me sad, besides that, was something else - it was the last game my teammates and I played before we moved up to the adult team.
They and I grew up playing soccer together, and when I was injured, they were always there for me, and when there was a need, each other would be the first to step forward, and I cherish this relationship. At the end of this game, we are going to be separated, and after that, we may not have the chance to represent the national team to play together again, I cried so much. Although this Asian Cup, once again as a member of the national team "out of the war", but always with the previous is not the same.
There were so many messages of congratulations right after this race that it felt like my phone got stuck.
David Beckham (1975-), British midfield footballer
Sent me a tweet to congratulate me, he remembered meeting me in 2013, I'm still quite happy, and if we have a chance to meet in the future, I would like to invite him to Sichuan for a hot pot.
It's nice to be able to bring a little spiritual strength to the New Year; it's nice to see all the compliments. But I also feel embarrassed, after all, I still have too much to work on. More importantly, we also have to keep a normal heart and not be affected by these comments. It's not that by winning the championship this time, China
women's soccer
We need to work harder to close the gap with other teams. We also hope that more people can pay attention to
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Support
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With the recent quarantine, we have been resting in the morning and training in the afternoon every day, and the volume of training has been slowly increasing over the past two days. When the quarantine ends, the university will also start. If I have time, I would like to go back to my hometown in Jiangyou and eat the braised fat intestines made by my dad. In the past, I was always away on New Year's Eve and didn't get to spend time with my mom and dad. I miss them.
