The Youth Women's Football Club was once born here, 【 Memory of the Sea 】 The first youth | women | football club in Shanghai
On July 20th, 2023, the FIFA Women's World Cup was held in Australia and New Zealand. Fans are full of expectations for China's resounding rose, and there are also many coaches and players from Shanghai in the Chinese women's football team. Shanghai plays an important role in women's football in China and is also one of the regions where women's football was first developed in China. The emerging athletes and coaches such as Sun Wen and Shui Qingxia from Shanghai are quite well-known both domestically and internationally. When it comes to Shanghai women's football, it must be said that the first teenage women's football club, Swan Women's Football Club, was born in Shanghai in the early 1980s.
In 1983, in order to promote the development of women's football, Hongkou District first conducted amateur training for young women's football at Yutian Xincun Primary School, which broke the traditional belief that only boys could play football.
With the support of the Education Bureau and Sports Commission of Hongkou District, the school overcame difficulties in ideological understanding and material conditions, and in just 4 to 5 years, women's football flourished on campus. The training of women's football has made great progress, and has trained a group of outstanding women's football talents for the country: Wang Jingxia, Pan Lina, Zhu Huihua, Yuan Fan, and others. These athletes have represented the national team in the World Cup, Olympic Games, Asian Cup, Asian Championships, and national competitions multiple times, achieving excellent results. Wang Jingxia later participated in the Atlanta Olympics and won the runner up. In 1984, Yutian Xincun Primary School was listed as a traditional women's football school with a site layout by the Shanghai Municipal Sports Commission and the Municipal Education Bureau.
Figure 1 shows the photo of Guo Weihua, a member of the club, after winning the championship in the elementary school women's football competition.
Figure 2 shows a group photo of Swan women's football players and coaches before training at Hongkou Stadium.
At that time, the Shanghai Municipal Sports Commission set up a football office to explore the institutional reform of Shanghai amateur sports schools, gradually developing the single mode of national operation and independent operation of the Sports Commission to the direction of multi-channel and multi form "joint operation", fully mobilizing and giving play to the enthusiasm of all sectors of society, and then established the "factory school linked" sports schools and the traditional key primary and secondary schools, and other forms of youth football teams to promote the development of youth football.
"The opportunity has come, can we find some companies to establish a youth football club?" Liu Genfa, then a physical education teacher at Yutian Xincun Primary School in Hongkou District, recently recalled the scene to me: the Yutian Xincun Primary School women's football team has already gained some fame in Shanghai, but due to people's prejudice, the development of women's football lacks the necessary financial resources. Many companies are enthusiastic about sponsoring men's football, and women's football has almost no corporate sponsorship, let alone women's football clubs.
Yutian Xincun Primary School launched women's football, which received high attention from the Hongkou District Committee, District Government, and education and sports departments at that time. Lu Lijuan, the then leader of Hongkou District, was very concerned about the school's football. In response to the lack of sponsorship for football, Lu Lijuan personally came forward and requested the district's enterprises to sponsor the establishment of a club. The enterprises in Hongkou District also fully support and generously donate, with 2000 yuan for you and 3000 yuan for him. Everyone is eager to gather firewood, and with the strong promotion of Shen Wenbin, then Chairman of the Shanghai Football Association and Director of the Hongkou District Sports Commission, the establishment of the club quickly gained momentum.
With strong support from leaders and sponsorship from enterprises, the first youth women's football club in Shanghai, Swan Women's Football Club, was officially established in Yutian Xincun Primary School in 1984. "At that time, we also published founding advertisements on various media outlets in Shanghai. When we were founded, various media outlets in Shanghai came to report and had a great impact," Liu Genfa said. Enterprises such as Hongkou District Cooperative Association and Hongkou District Subsidiary Food Company became the first group of sponsors for the club, and later Coca Cola's Shanghai company also joined the sponsorship ranks.
In order to promote the better and more sustainable development of women's football, and to expand and strengthen the Swan Women's Football Club, the club decided to adopt a one-stop training method of primary school, middle school, and university, so as to provide a good growth environment for women's football players and relieve the worries of athletes and parents. The primary school is located in Yutian Xincun Primary School, the secondary school is located in Siping Middle School, and the university is located in Shanghai Normal University. Many parents, seeing that their children have better growth prospects after becoming members of the club, take the initiative to send their children to the club for training.
Why is it called Swan Club? Liu Genfa said that at that time, there were very few girls playing football, and there was no climate in society, like an ugly duckling. So, everyone decided to turn the ugly duckling into a swan as soon as possible, and thus the name of the club was determined.
"The establishment of the club helped us solve our financial worries. At that time, girls from all streets in the district, and even girls from other areas, came to greet us and hoped to come to school to play football. The club was quite attractive at that time." Liu Genfa recalled that during the peak period of the club, there were more than 300 female football players in the school, and there were teams in every grade and class. After school, the playground is filled with people playing football. "Wang Lei, Lu Ronghui, and others who later became members of the Shanghai Women's Football Team were students from Huoshan Road Primary School and Zhongzhou Road Primary School, and they came to the club every day after school to play football."
With more girls playing football, coaching becomes a problem. At this time, Hongkou District has launched a measure for district sports school coaches to go to grassroots schools to help them carry out football. Chen Yi, the football coach of Hongkou District Sports School, came to Yutian Xincun Primary School as a coach and started working tirelessly with Liu Genfa on the training ground. In order to make up for the shortage of coaches, the established club also recruited talents and hired a group of people with certain football skills to serve as part-time coaches. Shi Mingfang, who graduated from Shanghai Sport University and comes from the Technical School of the Maritime Bureau, is one of them.
Former Shanghai women's football player Li Min was a member of the "Swan Phase I" team and a local player at Yutian Xincun Primary School. In the third grade of elementary school, when Li Min heard that the school was going to recruit female football players, he and his classmate Yang Ying, who was later selected for the Shanghai women's football team, signed up together. But Li Min's parents do not agree with her playing football, and the conditions are almost harsh: she needs to score 100 points in the math exam to play football.
Li Min has excellent speed and endurance, and Liu Genfa is passionate about talent. He even mobilized his math teacher to give Li Min extra lessons. Li Min also lived up to Liu Genfa's high expectations, and he really scored 100 points in mathematics. Although Li Min's parents were greatly surprised, they had to agree to let Li Min play football because they had an appointment beforehand. Li Min recalled that his mother said at the time that if she wanted to play, she would play well and achieve good results. At that time, there was a small open space under the building where Li Min lived. His mother put on sportswear and whenever she had free time, she helped Li Min practice football. Originally, Li Min had a headache when he was a child, but after practicing football, his head no longer hurts. This strengthened Li Min's parents' confidence in letting their daughter play football.
Guo Weihua, a female football player who also participated in the "Swan Phase I" and later entered Shanghai Youth Sports School, had to transfer to two buses every day after finishing school at Wuzhong Primary School in Hongkou District to participate in training at Yutian Xincun Primary School. She had to practice until dark before taking the bus home. "At that time, there were no rest days. People were resting, and we were either training or participating in competitions on the field."
Guo Weihua remembers that when he was a child, he loved to follow trends. At that time, the TV station was broadcasting the Japanese TV series "Volleyball Girl", in which the female protagonist Junko Kobayashi had two small ornaments tied to her head. So Guo Weihua imitated and put two small ornaments on his head. During training, he was discovered by the coach and asked to take off the ornaments. Stubborn Guo Weihua refused. The coach said that football players need to do header training. If you don't take it off, then go practice endurance running... Guo Weihua still regrets his stubbornness when he thinks about this now, because football players often use header style when attacking goals, and wearing accessories on their heads affects their performance.
Wang Lei, who was once a famous defender for the Shanghai women's football team, was also a member of the "Swan One" team. She initially studied basketball at Huoshan Road Primary School, but due to her short stature, her father wanted her to switch to playing football. "At that time, Wang Lei was training while sitting on the back seat of her father's bicycle..." Speaking of the scene at that time, several members of the "Swan One" team still remember that Wang Lei's father supervised the training ground every day. Due to starting later than other team members, Wang Lei finished training at the latest every day. Due to his father's supervision, Wang Lei dared not slack off in training at all.
Diligence pays off. Among the team members of the "Swan Phase I" back then, six of them were admitted to Shanghai Youth Sports School. Wang Lei later became a key defender and a brave "little elf" on the field in the Shanghai team, and was a key player trained by the then head coach of Shanghai women's football, Xin Zhigao. On March 25, 1989, the Xinmin Evening News reported on Wang Lei's performance in a national women's football match, stating that in the second half of the game, 15 year old "little fast horse" Tang Lingli timely inserted from the left side, took the ball to the bottom line, and passed it 5 meters in front of the goal. On the 6th, Wang Lei flashed past a defensive player and quickly followed, standing up to open the door. This is Wang Lei who scored three goals in two consecutive matches and made a great contribution for the Shanghai team to penetrate the national team's city wall for the first time.
Forty years have passed, and many former "Swan" team members are now over fifty years old. Some have become middle school physical education teachers, while others have become police officers. When they recall their experience playing football back then, they are still full of passion, expressing that they have never regretted playing football, and proudly saying that they were the first people to eat crabs, and also the pioneers of Chinese women's football. They will continue to do something to the best of their ability for the development of Chinese women's football.
