Short-term solution

While funding and investment are not adequate at present, they can only ever be a short-term solution to help people become more interested in women's soccer.

When interviewed, several female players said they felt more people have shown greater interest in women's soccer in recent years and more could be done to raise the general level of interest.

That is the intention of one school team. Nestled in the capital's southern suburbs, the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine is home to the top female team in the university division.

The reigning champions of China's female varsity soccer have several official accounts on social media platforms.

Their coach, Che Lu, started the accounts so more people would learn about the team, and the accounts have motivated and pleased the players.

Guo Xin, 20, said the team has been promoting itself and women's soccer through its official accounts on the Sina Weibo micro blog and the short-video platform Douyin, aka TikTok.

"We have been working hard to promote our team and also women's soccer," she said. "Girls playing soccer are happy and feel good about this."

School policies also play an important role in cultivating talent. Even though the situation has improved greatly in recent years, more needs to be done.

Che said the university sports association has a lot of problems at the organizational level and it has yet to consider the development of female soccer in schools.

"If China does not solve the systemic and management problems in soccer, it will be very difficult to grow," Che said.

"Most government ministries work independently and they only look out for themselves."

Wang Yumeng, who also plays for the BUCM team, said she hopes women's soccer will equal the male game when it comes to nurturing young talent.

"I hope that female soccer will be the same as male soccer, attaching importance to talent cultivation from primary school onward," Wang said.

"Because, in that respect, male soccer is a lot better than the female game in China.

"I feel that the policies for boys' soccer are much better than those for girls' soccer. In my city, boys earn a place in the top grade if they have participated in a city-level tournament match, but girls can only get that same right if they have participated in a provincial-level tournament and above. Moreover, the ranking must be a solid one as well," said Wang, who is from Dalian, Liaoning province.

Sun Chao's father-in-law, Shang Ruihua, who founded the Sunrise Football Academy, has coached both male and female teams since the 1980s.

In 1982, a friend told him that the Beijing women's team would be participating in a national women's soccer invitational tournament in the capital and asked him to help train the players.

"At the time, I was very surprised, because I had never heard of women kicking a ball before," he said. "So, from then on, I started to train women's teams."