Spotlight on the sports industry pioneers who are chasing their dreams in Issue 2,533 of Big Business in Sports.
Text/Zeng Xiao
Sports Business Reporter
Wang Frost's kick in the international arena has set the stage for China's women's soccer team to stride towards the Tokyo Olympics with their heads held high, and the whole country is excited about it. Thousands of miles away, Yunnan Shilin County, Wize Qinglian expectations of the elementary school of women's soccer team, the group of unknown girls, also cheered in front of the TV. They, too, are about to usher in a new joy.
Alipay joined hands with the Chinese Football Association (CFA) to build a women's soccer-themed stadium in this elementary school, where they finally said goodbye to the hard days of crawling and rolling around on the concrete floor, and could chase their soccer dreams without fear.
From Mud to Green, the Transformation of Village Girls' Soccer
"With a soccer field, we can play first too."
Wize Qinglian Expectation Primary School set up a girls' soccer team in 2017, with 20 players, all of whom are of Yi ethnicity. Since its establishment, the girls have participated in the Shilin Yi Autonomous County Schools Football League every year, but their results have been unsatisfactory. Last year, their only victory in the league came from defeating the only team in the county without a soccer field.
Their hard lives are shown in the documentary.
Goalie Bi Huimei, who is favored by several coaches, has mixed emotions. On the one hand, she wants to help the team through her own strength; on the other hand, she has a lot of psychological pressure on training and expects to grow up fast and quit soon. "So that I can leave."
Amy Bee practicing her lunges on the mat.
On the hard concrete floor, every save was a torture. The coach had gotten several large mats to protect her, but in the group confrontation session, Bi Huimei still used her weak body to fight against the hard ground again and again.
Bi Huimei's mixed feelings
Huang Mingzhu, the team's top scorer, influenced by her father and brother at home, loves soccer since she was a child, often watches the game with her family at home, loves Wang Frost and Wang Shanshan, and regards the Chinese women's soccer team as her idol. Her biggest wish is to become a player of the Chinese women's soccer team. However, due to the limitations of the conditions, she could not play her best every time she went out to play, and she always felt that she could have scored more goals. "The ball rolls a long way at once on the concrete, and the ball rolls slower on the grass, so it always feels uncomfortable to go out and play."
What the girls were most eager for was to go to a game at another school so they could experience a real soccer field. As the bus ride pulled into the rival school's playground, they were immediately attracted to the rival school's beautiful professional field, and as soon as they stepped off the bus, they couldn't wait to get on it with a ball and kick it.
However, this excitement was soon replaced by discomfort, and they lost the game without incident. On the way back after a game, the girls were exasperated and their defiance kept spreading, with several of their teammates discussing, "If we had a professional court to train on as well, we'd be able to kick our way to first place."
The Girl Who Wouldn't Give Up
When they finally learned that their school was going to have a professional field, the excitement and thrill was overwhelming. During the days of construction, they would lie on their backs in the hallways as soon as they got out of class to look at the field from afar. As each piece of artificial turf continued to be laid, they grew more and more impatient. "I can't wait to get up there and kick some ass now."
Before going to bed at night, they chatted in their dorm rooms, and with a professional pitch, they dared to dream bigger. "Will any of us play in the Chinese women's soccer team?"
They were both excited and nervous on the day the pitch was completed. Veteran women's soccer players Sun Wen, Liu Ailing and Wang Liping also came to the Wize YLF Expectation Primary School to witness the brand new pitch. In fact, these little girls were not yet born when the Veteran Women's Soccer Team was at its peak. However, when they saw the old women's soccer players, these shy little girls still spoke the names of their predecessors at the first time. This shows the status of Chinese women's soccer in the hearts of the little girls and their love for soccer.
Old Women's Soccer and Little Girls
The girls finally kicked a soccer ball for the first time on it, perhaps because they were nervous, they were a little bit unable to let go instead. Seeing this, Sun Wen immediately picked up the ball and demonstrated it herself, encouraging the girls to enjoy their day.
Assisted by the veteran internationals, these girls quickly got into the swing of things, with smiles on every face. On the flat and soft artificial turf, their footsteps in pursuit of their dreams will be more solid.
Bihuimei, who had previously been thinking about quitting the team, said she now has that little bit of a love for soccer.
Amy Bee finally likes soccer.
Alipay renders how to tell a good story for the public good
On the road to pursuing their dreams, these girls will not be alone. On the message wall in front of the Rose Wish Stadium, tens of thousands of nicknames are engraved, witnessing every drop of sweat left by the girls.
This not only allows the girls to feel the warmth, but also allows thousands of netizens to personally participate in the public welfare cause, and become a small help to promote the development of China's women's soccer.
Internet nickname wall
China's women's soccer team to impact the qualification for the Tokyo Olympics, is the top of the list of national teams this year, the big battle. Alipay, which has been supporting the development of China's women's soccer team, foresees that this will surely trigger public opinion and thus prepares in advance, hoping to increase the influence of the women's soccer team through this big event. At a time when Chinese women's soccer is not often a social hotspot, it allows more people to see that, at the back of Wang Frost's international wave, there are more people who are quietly contributing to it.
Before the start of the two rounds of play-offs between the Chinese women's soccer team and the South Korean team, Alipay, in conjunction with the Chinese Football Association (CFA), planned a network of interactive topics in a number of social media channels, summoning netizens to form a "Rose Cheer Front" and collecting netizens' blessings for the Rose Wish Stadium, which is a unique and creative form of activity that has successfully connected the Chinese women's soccer team to a village elementary school soccer stadium. The unique and creative form of the activity successfully linked the Chinese women's soccer team and a village elementary school soccer field together.
Alipay calls on netizens to form a "Rose Cheering Front".
Once the campaign was released, it achieved more than expected results, with hundreds of millions of microbloggers participating in the campaign topic, harvesting multiple hot searches on Weibo, Jitterbug, and Shutterbug, and gaining over 10,000 comments of support on vertical channels such as Understand Balls, Live Bar, and Hupo, as well as ten million netizens donating steps on Alipay Sports.
The Chinese women's soccer team flipped in desperation to advance, became the focus of national debate in those days, Alipay and the Football Association then announced that the Rose Wish Stadium would land in Yunnan, attracting a lot of attention and successfully on the hot search. When the stadium was completed, it attracted a lot of reports from authoritative media and government websites, including Xinhua News Agency, China News Agency, People's Daily, CCTV News, China Sports News, and the official website of the State General Administration of Sports.
In fact, Alipay deleted all commercial claims in 2019 when it announced its 10-year, 1-billion-support program for the Chinese women's soccer team. But how to accomplish brand impact, bring positive energy, and bring small but beautiful changes in a public welfare method without commercial terms, Alipay has made a good demonstration.
Small ballpark, big aspirations
At the stadium completion ceremony, Sun Wen, vice president of the CFA, said, "I hope more girls will confidently take to the field and fall in love with soccer, and more importantly, gain friendship, happiness, and more possibilities in life."
Let the little girl in the remote mountain village, from the small stadium, to the big dream, to chase the unlimited possibilities of a wonderful life, it is Alipay in China to assist the women's football change and development of innovation at the same time, and set up the "chasing the wind program" project of the original intention.
Stadium Completion Ceremony
Wang Peng, general manager of Ant Group Sports, explained in detail to Sports Big Business Alipay's considerations in promoting the cause of Chinese women's soccer.
"In July 2019, while announcing our support for the Chinese women's soccer team, we also announced the 'Wind Chaser Program' for school girls' soccer, and the official microblog of the People's Daily once praised that soccer has a dream, and that the wind-chasing girls are indestructible. Chasing the wind plan will be within five years, for remote areas of counties, townships, towns, villages, especially from 832 former national poverty-stricken counties of elementary school, to support 100 rural school girls' soccer teams, each unit invested 300,000, a total of 30 million. This time the construction of the stadium of the Wize Youth League Expectation Primary School, is the first announced this year, the wind chasing program schools."
Alipay Launches "Wind Chaser Program" for 2019
The reason why Alipay has paid attention to the group of women's soccer in rural schools comes from Alipay's affinity with the Hainan Qiongzhong women's soccer team in 2017. Hainan Qiongzhong women's soccer, located in Qiongzhong County, Hainan Province, where it was not declared out of poverty until 2019. However, under extremely difficult circumstances, the locality insists on carrying out women's soccer, which brings hope to the local girls in life. After Alipay's sponsorship, the Qiongzhong women's soccer team has been developed even more.
Wang Peng introduced, "In 2017, we cooperated with Coach Ma Liangxing, the former head coach of the national women's soccer team, to help Qiongzhong women's soccer team in scientific training, medical support, talent cultivation, and system construction through the support of funds, resources and technology. Qiongzhong women's soccer team has 8 people into the national youth training team, 6 people into professional clubs, more than 30 players went to college as sports specialties, and more than 100 players became national level and second level athletes. Just this month, two more girls entered the U14 national training team."
Qiongzhong Women's Soccer
The real-life story of women's soccer in Qiongzhong is highly representative. For remote areas, especially for girls in remote areas, soccer means more than just soccer. Paypal found that soccer brings girls, not only strong body, professional skills, but also more is never say die persistence and faith, from shyness and low self-esteem to self-confidence and cheerful change, and the hope of international and future life.
Wang Peng emphasized that "the development of soccer is not only the work of the athletic system, but more importantly, it is a kind of education, and its essence is to establish morality and nurture people. Integration of sports and education is a national policy, and to educate people through sports is an important part of the strategy to strengthen the country through sports. Our chasing the wind program, settled in schools in remote areas with a lack of sports resources, hoping that through soccer, the most universal sport, so that more girls in remote areas, enjoy the fun of sports, broaden their horizons, physical fitness, sharpening their will, even if they can't enter the field of professional soccer in the future, but also can get out of the mountains, into the university, and have more choices in life."
Moreover, Alipay's wind chasing program is not only limited to financial and hardware level support. Taking Yunnan Province, where Wize Youth League Expectation Primary School is located, for example, Alipay has made more attempts. Wang Peng revealed: "We will cooperate with the education department of Yunnan Province to hire high-level coaches of provincial school soccer - the head of the coaching team is a UEFA A-level coach - to give regular lectures for the wind chasing school, in addition to the 'sending coach to the countryside' which comes to the school once a month for on-site coaching. In addition to on-site coaching 'send to the countryside' course, will be initiated by the school soccer teachers every week a 'live online training class', please high-level coaches remote coaching, to improve the level of the Yunnan Province chasing the wind of the school girls' football coaches and the level of daily training. "
Green pitch brings hope to village
Happily, with the continuous practice of the Wind Chaser program and the landing of the "Rose Wish Stadium", which represents the spirit of women's soccer, Alipay has brought changes to women's soccer in rural schools, and to rural girls, which has been produced in real terms.
At the end of that documentary, the team's scorer, Huang Mingzhu, looked at the beautiful stadium and couldn't stop herself from starting to imagine the future as she smiled at the camera and said, "I want to get out of the mountains, I want to play on a bigger soccer field."
Under the impetus of Alipay, such a "rose wish" will not only be realized in a larger soccer field, but also in the village girls' life field.
Pearl Wong imagines the future
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Images used are from the web and paypal
