Members of the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine women's soccer team, sponsored by Teda, a conglomerate in Tianjin, gather in a huddle before a game in Jiangning, Jiangsu province, in Oct 2019. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]
Development of the women's game is hampered by poor organization and low public awareness. Christine Low reports.
Wearing her hair in a tight bun secured by a flowery elastic hair tie, 7-year-old Zhao Fangyu ran around the training field at the Sunrise Football Academy with razor-sharp focus during a practice game. Despite being the slightest and shortest of her peers, Fangyu ran as fast as the others, while keeping her eyes on the ball.
What set her apart was not just her small physical build, but the fact that she was the only girl at the session. She is one of just two girls in her age group attending training at the academy, and, as the game is still a largely male-dominated sport, women and girls are exceptions on China's soccer fields.
However, the country's 2016 blueprint to become a soccer powerhouse has led to companies pledging donations and support for teams of all sizes at different levels and leagues.
In July, female soccer in China gained a boost in its public standing when Alipay announced a 1 billion yuan ($141 million) donation to support the girls' and women's game over the next 10 years. The move raised questions about whether large donations can give women's soccer a much-needed boost to improve its global standing and help change perceptions of the players.
Though Fangyu displays a fierce passion on the field, the little girl is shy and reserved off it. When asked about her love for the game, she spoke in a soft voice and answered in short sentences. Last year, she became enamored with soccer while playing it with classmates at school.
Her father, Zhao Taihui, said his daughter chose soccer as an extracurricular activity when she was in first grade.
"At the beginning, her mother asked her 'Why do you like soccer?' At the time, she did not know what soccer was, she just liked to run around," he said. "She told her mother that she liked to run around. It was probably after she had played soccer for some time that she liked it more and more."
Young girls like Fangyu are part of a new generation working to achieve China's soccer dream. The country hopes to reclaim its ranking as one of the world's top female teams by 2050, after the national team ranked 16 at the end of this year's FIFA Women's World Cup.
Players celebrate a goal during a game in Jiangsu. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]
Donations
That is part of the reason Alipay supports women's soccer. Two years before the company announced its donation, it started supporting female players in Qiongzhong Li and Miao autonomous county on the southern island province of Hainan.
"The 1 billion yuan initiative is an extension and expansion of Alipay's two-year-long program to support girls' football in the county, where several girls are enrolled in the national youth team," said Wang Ling, a public relations representative with Alipay.
Having seen the success of the program in Qiongzhong, Alipay has expanded its philanthropic efforts to provide long-term support aimed at improving the performance of the Chinese women's national team, along with related initiatives. In addition to the 1 billion yuan donation, the company has started the Wind Rider project, which will see it provide money for girls' teams independently in rural areas.
While Alipay said its donation to women's soccer is the largest by any donor to date, several professionals in the field said funding is still far from sufficient.
Chen Zhengzhi, a sports professional who has run a youth soccer program for seven years and is based in the United States, said funds alone will not be enough to help develop women's soccer.
"Funds only solve 70 or 80 percent of the problem," he said. "The remaining 20 or 30 percent is up to a lot of other people to solve."
Sun Chao, owner of the Sunrise Football Academy, felt that donations from one company would not be enough to support women's soccer in China, and more companies would soon follow Alipay's lead.
He noted that large-scale investment is not forthcoming because the commercial value of women's soccer is low, and said this is why women's soccer has not prospered in China in recent years.
"Before, the country invested in women's soccer and there was no commercial investment involved," Sun said. "But now, even after many sports in China such as soccer started to commercialize, there is no market and there are not enough funds to support it. These factors have led to Chinese women's soccer falling in the global rankings."
Sun's thoughts were echoed by Yu Yun, head coach of professional women's soccer team BG Phoenix, who said the current level of investment in women's soccer is much lower than in the men's game.
"When comparing investment in men's and women's soccer, the gap is still very wide," he said.
Sitting in the stands in Beijing's Xiannongyun Sports Stadium early last month, Yu closely watched BG Phoenix play a practice game. Having won a China Women's Super League match in Henan province the previous weekend, the players were focused on winning a game in Guangdong province the following day.
The victory in Henan had put them in fourth place, so they hoped that winning the game in Guangdong would place them third out of the eight teams in the league.
Ma Xiaolan, a 20-year-old university student who is contracted to BG Phoenix, wants to see the team do well in league matches, but, as an athlete who plays the sport well, she also wants to help change Chinese women's soccer.
"The attention focused on women's soccer is really low now," she said. "Because of the state of women's soccer in China, I really want to change it. Whether it is the efforts of one person or a group, we still want changes."
The BG Phoenix team high-fives the opposition at a game in Changchun, Jilin province, last month. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]
Short-term solution
While funding and investment are not adequate at present, they can only ever be a short-term solution to help people become more interested in women's soccer.
When interviewed, several female players said they felt more people have shown greater interest in women's soccer in recent years and more could be done to raise the general level of interest.
That is the intention of one school team. Nestled in the capital's southern suburbs, the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine is home to the top female team in the university division.
The reigning champions of China's female varsity soccer have several official accounts on social media platforms.
Their coach, Che Lu, started the accounts so more people would learn about the team, and the accounts have motivated and pleased the players.
Guo Xin, 20, said the team has been promoting itself and women's soccer through its official accounts on the Sina Weibo micro blog and the short-video platform Douyin, aka TikTok.
"We have been working hard to promote our team and also women's soccer," she said. "Girls playing soccer are happy and feel good about this."
School policies also play an important role in cultivating talent. Even though the situation has improved greatly in recent years, more needs to be done.
Che said the university sports association has a lot of problems at the organizational level and it has yet to consider the development of female soccer in schools.
"If China does not solve the systemic and management problems in soccer, it will be very difficult to grow," Che said.
"Most government ministries work independently and they only look out for themselves."
Wang Yumeng, who also plays for the BUCM team, said she hopes women's soccer will equal the male game when it comes to nurturing young talent.
"I hope that female soccer will be the same as male soccer, attaching importance to talent cultivation from primary school onward," Wang said.
"Because, in that respect, male soccer is a lot better than the female game in China.
"I feel that the policies for boys' soccer are much better than those for girls' soccer. In my city, boys earn a place in the top grade if they have participated in a city-level tournament match, but girls can only get that same right if they have participated in a provincial-level tournament and above. Moreover, the ranking must be a solid one as well," said Wang, who is from Dalian, Liaoning province.
Sun Chao's father-in-law, Shang Ruihua, who founded the Sunrise Football Academy, has coached both male and female teams since the 1980s.
In 1982, a friend told him that the Beijing women's team would be participating in a national women's soccer invitational tournament in the capital and asked him to help train the players.
"At the time, I was very surprised, because I had never heard of women kicking a ball before," he said. "So, from then on, I started to train women's teams."
Players tussle for the ball during the game in Changchun. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]
Changing attitudes
Most female soccer players interviewed said they did not feel any sort of bias in a sport long dominated by men, and some felt that general attitudes have changed compared with a decade ago.
However, despite the establishment of the national women's team in 1983 and the progress it has made since then, Chinese women's soccer is still not at the same level as its counterparts in the US and European countries.
In terms of culture, Shang believes that women's soccer in China lags far behind its foreign counterparts and traditional beliefs mean it is not as robust.
"Soccer players in the US can get married, have kids and continue to play, but in China, that is impossible," he said.
According to the Chinese Football Association, the men's national teams consist of the main side and two youth teams, while the women's national soccer teams only consist of the main national team and one youth team.
In terms of soccer leagues, 16 men's teams compete in the Chinese Football Association Super League, the top tier, but only eight teams compete in the China Women's Super League.
Sun, who runs the academy with his wife, said the number of girls playing soccer in cities such as Beijing is low.
Based on his observations, most of the girls taking up soccer come from less-developed parts of the country.
He added that there is still some opposition to girls playing soccer, which is the biggest difference from their peers in the US and Europe.
"Parents from more-advanced cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou (Guangdong) are more willing to let their daughters learn 'quieter things' (such as knitting and drawing)," he said.
"They feel they will face a lot of opposition and that their daughters will have to train in harsh weather."
Fangyu is one of just 10 girls out of the 1,000 students training at Sunrise. However, the huge difference in numbers does not bother her or her parents. She believes she will still be kicking a ball around when she is in high school.
For her parents, though, the most important thing is whether she will remain interested in the sport in the future.
"Now, she's just pursuing a hobby, pursuing a sport. It's something she likes to do, so we will do our utmost to help nurture it. We have not thought much about the future," her father said.
