The Beijing Women's U18 team forms a circle to encourage each other after training on April 13 at Liangxiang Sports Center. Photographer: Yin Nan
"Choosing this path means working half-time and the kids have to work hard to pursue their dreams."
It was an afternoon in mid-April when Liu Ying sat in the stands of the Liangxiang Sports Center and slowly expressed his expectations for the young players.
As a former member of the "Clanging Roses" of China's women's soccer team, Liu Ying has been on the coaching path since 2006, 16 years ago. Now, she is in charge of the U18 team of Beijing Women's Soccer, the former star of the field, with a smile, cultivated a batch of players, I wonder if I see the shadow of my youth in them.
The young generation of the team is growing up and they will be the new hope of Beijing women's soccer.
Selection dilemma
Only 40 or 50 people in the age group to choose from
Xiannongtan Sports School currently has three women's soccer teams, in addition to the first team of Beijing Women's Soccer Team, there are U18 team coached by Liu Ying and U16 team coached by Wei Zhankui, the 2009-2010 age group team will soon be formed.
Currently, the three teams are scattered in three places, working for their own goals: the first team of the Beijing Women's Soccer Team is in Haikou to participate in the Women's Super League, the U18 team is in Beijing to prepare for next year's Youth Games, and the U16 team is in Beihai, Guangxi for training.
The Beijing women's soccer team faces a common problem: narrow selection.
"There are only about 40 or 50 people to choose from in an age group, and a team needs to select 20 or 30 from them. At one time there were six amateur sports schools in Beijing, but many of them no longer exist, so we can only select from the Daxing and Xiangyang sports schools." Liu Ying sighed, "The good thing is that the two sports schools deliver good quality talent. After the popularity of school soccer, more girls started to play soccer, but it's hard for parents to support girls to choose professional soccer."
Due to the limitations of the selection surface, it is difficult to replicate in women's soccer the practice of men's clubs adopting the same formations and technical and tactical skills from the first team to the ladder teams, and coaches can only teach according to the materials. This phenomenon also extends to the adult team, even many women's super team, there is no distinctive technical and tactical characteristics, only according to different opponents to develop the technical and tactical requirements of the game.
However, different from the outside world worried voice, engaged in team coaching work for many years Liu Ying on the development of China's women's football status quo does not hold a pessimistic attitude, "in fact, China's women's football system is now quite perfect, each professional team below the youth team. Even in some provinces and cities without adult professional teams, there are women's soccer youth teams, and the total number of teams is not small. It can be said that a system that the supporting things are basically all matched."
Perhaps another difficulty is that there are fewer competitions for women's youth soccer teams; before the epidemic, a team was able to compete in about 20 national competitions a year. "It's still a little bit less, and it's impossible to get results without competition accumulation; players have to go through competitions to improve." Liu Ying said.
Team members stretching during warm-up drills. Photographer: Yin Nan
the way of coaching
Coach Becomes Versatile, Choreographs Rehabilitation for All
More than 20 years ago, the "clanging roses" are now scattered all over the world, is still contributing to China's women's football, Liu Ying one by one counting the old teammates post, "Fan Yunjie and Wang Liping is now a partner, they lead the Henan women's football team, Bai Jie in Shenzhen to lead the team, Pu Wei in the university, Zhao Lihong in Guangzhou Sports Institute as a leader everyone is doing work related to football. Zhao Lihong in Guangzhou Sports Institute as a leader ...... Everyone is doing soccer-related work."
But it is true that no one has led the team for so long as Liu Ying, 16 years of coaching career, 4 years as the head coach of the first team of the Beijing women's soccer team (2014-2017), 12 years rooted in the youth training. From star player to coach, her transition has not encountered any difficulties, "I enjoy coaching, watching the children grow and improve day by day is especially fulfilling. Truly, I enjoy the role of a coach whether I win or lose a game."
From the top of the pyramid of China's women's soccer team, Liu Ying will tell the children about the scenery they have seen, so that they will aspire to the national team as a goal; she will also tell the younger generation of the detours they have taken, the reasons for the injuries they suffered, as far as possible, to make early warning for them.
Liu Ying, head coach of the Beijing Women's U18 team, receives an exclusive interview with Xinjing Daily. Photographer: Yin Nan
Time has brought changes to the soccer and practitioners, despite the claim that our players are "not as good as the next generation", but Liu Ying does not agree, "Now the children must be better than we were then, the society is progressing, the development of soccer, we can not use our then the way to ask for the children now. When we played soccer, there was no training video? Where were the statistics? Where were the choreographies and analysis? We had never even heard of core strength, we often trained on dirt fields, and we were so excited to see a patch of grass. Now, the data can tell you a lot visually, and there are fitness and nutritionists to help."
Liu Ying laments that the conditions are so perfect now that sometimes when she teaches these children, she will suddenly want to see her own posture of kicking a soccer ball when she was fifteen or sixteen years old, but she can't remember how to do it. "This may be my only regret - not being able to see my own posture of kicking a soccer ball when I was a child."
The new era of coaches to keep up with the times, Liu Ying is satisfied with his progress, "the team has a camera, I will choreograph, once the coach how to know choreography ah? The new generation of coaches is definitely better than Ma Finger (Ma Yuanan, the former head coach of our women's national soccer team) (laughs)." In addition to video choreography, Liu Ying is also learning a variety of knowledge, athletes with basic injuries and illnesses she can diagnose and know how to rehabilitate, "These are learned, I will not lie on the honor once."
As a practitioner, Liu Ying admitted that women's football to find funding is indeed very difficult, and many women's super team has never even had a sponsor, because unlike investing in men's football, investing in women's football to get a return is extremely limited. "But now the conditions than once has been too good, I'm quite content, as for the difficulties encountered, we find ways to overcome it on the good."
The team warms up for training under the guidance of the coach. Photographer: Yin Nan
The Way Out
In addition to kicking jobs, more players are going to college
"Time flies really fast ah, just a turn of the eye, we play soccer that time is more than 20 years ago." The old "clanging roses" has long been the legend of China's women's soccer team, but the team's children did not show surprise to the "legend around", Liu Ying said this on the smile, "They are only teenagers, just heard about us! The year kicked how how, and have not seen us play football. In the past two years, the body's athletic function has declined, and even give them a demonstration are less."
Because of the limited space available at the Beijing Xiannongtan Sports School, the Beijing U18 Women's Soccer Team is not based at the school, but in Fangshan. Finding a place for the team is not an easy task, there are not many suitable locations that can accommodate a team's training, classes, food and accommodation at the same time. Yes, classes, soccer is not all the girls do, but studying is also an important part of the daily routine of the Beijing U18 women's soccer teams.
"Of course the kids have to read!"
Liu Ying aggravated tone to emphasize, she counted the team's schedule, the players in the morning to learn cultural courses, afternoon training, every night there is an hour and a half of Internet class, the team to create a good learning environment for the players.
Examination of the university continuing education is the tradition of the Xiannongtan sports school, all the way from this tradition Liu Ying knows the importance of it. In a team, there are very few children who can play out. In the Beijing U18 women's soccer team of more than 20 players, Liu Ying optimistic about the seedling has six or seven, and by the old international footballer that the future may enter the national team only two or three people.
A group photo of the Beijing Women's U18 soccer team. Photographer: Yin Nan
"Where are the other kids going? That's why I keep telling the kids that it's time to think about the future when they choose this path now and go on to a semi-job. The players have two goals, some want to get into the professional team, some want to go to college, and whichever way they go, they have to work hard for it." This is Liu Ying has been to the team seedling instilled the concept of most of the players from the Beijing women's soccer team out of the sports university, she was a little proud to cite an example, "There are also go to the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the future will be to the development of this aspect of sports rehabilitation."
"The way out of playing women's soccer is actually not narrow, especially the Xiannongtan Sports School and Beijing Women's Soccer Club think more carefully for their players, but many people don't understand this." Liu Ying spread her hands, somewhat helpless.
April in Beijing is the season of spring flowers, warm sunshine caresses the green grass. The young generation of Liangxiang Sports Center is growing up, and they will become the new hope of Beijing Women's Football Team.
