On March 15, the newly reshuffled Chinese women's soccer team outscored England in a penalty shootout at the Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal. Earlier in the tournament, they suffered straight loses to Norway 1-0, Sweden 2-0, and Germany 2-0. The last and only win against England hauled China to seventh place, its worst ever performance.

Despite the humiliating results, some of the players were not discouraged. They said, "We have fallen behind and we know who we are now." The former "dream team" of women's soccer had previously won the title twice, and advanced to the top three in the tournament since 1996.

This year, Han Duan was the only goal scorer. She said, "The failure is no surprise at all. It reflects the current state of women's soccer in China."
 
However, Wang Haiming, head coach of the team, was less philosophical about the matter. For him, the frustration is unbearable and "extremely cruel".

The gradual deterioration of women's soccer in China has been attributed to the retirement of several of the national team's star players. This coupled with a shortage of young talent.

Before the FIFA World Cup held in Los Angeles in 2003, the Chinese national team was practically unmatched. The starting line-up that included Sun Wen, Liu Ailing and Sun Qingmei was the winning formula that lulled management into a certain complacency. They neither thought of making improvements to the line-up nor of training new players.

Cracks began to show after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but these were ignored and overshadowed by the euphoria of China's silver medal win at the Games. The situation worsened in 2001 when Sun Wen, winner of the Golden Ball and Golden Boot awards at the 1999 Women's World Cup, and several of her teammates retired.

According to Tony Di Cicco, former head coach of the United States national team, the shortage of new talent is not the only reason why Chinese women's soccer has failed to impress in recent years. The main problem is that little attention has been paid to developing player strength and competitiveness. Di Cicco was expected to have taken charge of training the Chinese team in 2004.

Han said, "If we are to catch up with stronger teams like the US, Germany and Canada, we can't shut ourselves off from reality. The team should play more intensified and strength-focused games."

Wang also admitted, "We seldom focused on physical competitiveness training and that was what left us in the dust when faced with the fierce performance of the European teams."

Despite China's disappointing turn at the Algarve Cup, the China Football Association was not disheartened. Newly elected CFA president, Xie Yalong, sent a message of encouragement to the team saying, "Be patient and let's start from scratch". Further, the CFA has no intention of replacing Wang as head coach. They said, "We cannot put the blame on Wang because the problem lies with the overall incompetence of the players."

The question now is, can China regain its glory days of 1999? Xue Li, vice president of the CFA, said that there is no concrete game plan at the moment. She added, "We are still feeling our way across."

The only thing that is clear for now is that Wang Haiming is focused on training young players for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

(China.org.cn by Li Xiao, March 25, 2005)