Opinion | Chinese women’s football needs a long-term strategy if the Steel Roses are to truly blossom
- Fifa Women’s World Cup will be a good gauge of current level of Shui Qingxia’s team – and the size of the gap that needs to be closed
- Deeper playing pool is vital – as the perpetually beleaguered men’s game in China has repeatedly shown, money on its own will not deliver results
Twenty-three years ago, on a scorching July day beneath the California sun, China’s female footballers stood on the cusp of sporting immortality.
Ma Yuanan’s side were one win away from claiming the ultimate prize but, after 120 minutes and a penalty shoot-out, the “Steel Roses” fell short of glory at the 1999 Women’s World Cup, losing in the fierce midday heat at the cavernous Pasadena Rose Bowl to hosts the United States.
It was a rivalry that defined the era in the women’s game, with the Americans holding a hex over Ma’s talented team having previously defeated the Chinese in the gold medal match at the Olympic Games three years earlier.
Despite those near-misses, those were golden days for women’s football in China. The nation was in the midst of a run of utter dominance at continental level, winning seven consecutive Asian Women’s Championships (now known as the AFC Women’s Asian Cup) and featuring regularly in the latter stages of the sport’s major events.
But lurking in the background was an issue that would bring an end to China’s superiority, seeing them slip into the chasing pack as the US remained at the forefront, where they were joined by Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.
“What we should do is not correct the technical mistakes we made during the Games,” Wang Junsheng, then-deputy chairman of the Chinese Football Association said after China were eliminated in the group phase at the 2000 Olympics.