The East Stand

Tottenham’s Tang Jiali and Celtic’s Shen Mengyu offer Chinese football pathway to better future

Tang Jiali scores first goal for Spurs while Shen Mengyu has hit the ground running at Celtic to give hope for Chinese women’s football

After woeful Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the Chinese FA has to choose new coach and get star player Wang Shuang back with game’s best

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Former PSG player Wang Shuang of China celebrates scoring a goal with teammate Wang Shanshan. Photo: Reuters

Formerly of the South China Morning Post, Jonathan White has written about sport from China for nearly 15 years, and covered the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Fifa World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Published: 7:00am, 18 Oct 2021

It is more than two months since one of the darkest hours of Chinese women’s football when the Steel Roses lost 8-1 to the Netherlands at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

China’s Olympics were poor before that – a 5-0 defeat to Brazil was followed by an embarrassing 4-4 draw with world No 104 Zambia – but the greatest humiliation was saved for last.

The Netherlands ran riot in Yokohama and it prompted the kind of hand-wringing and head-scratching normally reserved for the men’s football team and its catalogue of catastrophes.

Fans called for coach Jia Xiuquan to go, telling him to “get out of class” as Chinese football supporters say, and criticising his choices.

Some of the biggest names in the women’s game missed out as he picked an inexperienced squad and football fans were enraged by those who did not get the nod for the Summer Games.