China’s ‘country above all’ attitude comes at a cost for stars Wang Shuang and Zhu Ting ahead of Tokyo 2020

When China take Italy next week in the Women’s World Cup, all eyes will be on Wang Shuang.

The team’s sole world class footballer, has not delivered in France yet. She did not even start the first game, despite Germany’s coaching staff identifying her as the danger.

Wang scored seven goals and eight assists in 18 games since moving to Paris Saint-Germain but is yet to register a shot at this World Cup.

Coach Jia Xiuquan thinks it might be because of the pressure of being China’s star.

“She carried huge psychological pressure onto the World Cup stage,” he said this week after they awaited their knockout opponent. “I wished she could have performed better.”

There is undoubtedly pressure but is there more to it?

Wang recently wrote a startlingly frank contribution to the Player’s Tribune website.

“On The Pitch, You Are Never Alone” lives up to its name as she talks of her time in South Korea and Paris, where she is only happy playing.

She cuts a lonely figure, leaving the aunt and uncle that raised her aged 12 to go to alone to football school in Beijing over 1,000km from her Wuhan home.

The 24-year-old’s article is also notable for its criticism of her past coaches. This is not the done thing in Chinese sport and the widely shared Chinese translation will not have escaped the powers that be. She will soon be easier for them to keep an eye on.

However she performs at the World Cup – and China need her to be at her best to reach their target of the semi-finals – afterwards Wang is expected to return to the Chinese Women’s Super League to prepare for the Olympics.

That seems short-sighted and likely to stunt her career.

As the country’s only player based outside China would the ideal preparation not be to stay and go head-to-head with Lyon, the best team in women’s football?

It is unlikely her decision to make and she is not the only one. Women’s volleyball captain Zhu Ting has also returned to China ahead of Tokyo 2020.

As much as Zhu puts the country first, it’s hard to think that she has not been told to do that.

She has turned her back on the biggest wages in volleyball and world championships with Vakifbank Istanbul. It is hardly as if China have suffered while she has been in Turkey.

Perhaps the recalls are because China rarely has to deal with its athletes being based overseas.

But would Wu Lei be asked to return to the Chinese Super League from Spain to help the Olympic effort?

Yao Ming was allowed to stay with the Houston Rockets in the NBA while representing China. He even carried the flag at Athens 2004 and walked the Olympic flame into Tiananmen Square in 2008.

It seems there is a double standard at play.

Zhu’s coach Lang Ping – who won Olympic gold for China in Los Angeles in 1984 – was branded a “traitor” for leaving the Chinese model after her playing career had ended.

She coached the US team at Beijing 2008 and it did not help that the US beat the hosts in the pools and went on to get silver to China’s bronze.

All has been forgiven since – she coached China to Olympic gold at Rio 2016 – but it seems odd that this was ever the public perception. It would be as odd if she was the one who advised Zhu to come back.

Perhaps it is inevitable with China’s Soviet-style sports model, where you are part of the system from the day you start sports school to retirement.

It has worked over the years – there is a mountain of Olympic gold to prove it – but it is outmoded.

This is a country where the answer to improving the nation’s footballing fortunes is taking 55 players from their clubs in the middle of the season for military training. That’s straight out of the 1950s.

Yet China has shown flexibility in the past. Tennis star Li Na was allowed to “fly solo” as the policy was known in China when she was set free from the system after the 2008 Olympics.

Li set her own agenda, got her own coaches and kept her prize money. It paid off. She remains China’s only singles slam winner.

It was notable that Li never thanked the country when she won – and she was hauled over the coals for that in state media.

And then there’s Lin Dan. The man viewed as the greatest to ever pick up a badminton racket is not confined to the rules of China’s other sportsmen and women.

Unlike China’s footballers, he sports his tattoos openly. Unlike everyone, he is allowed his own sponsorship deals outside the national team’s. All because of what he has given the country.

In China it is country above all without exception. Apart from the exceptions, of course.