On Friday (01/28/2022) Martina Voss-Tecklenburg held a workshop in Breisgau with her coaching team of the women’s national team.
It was about important future issues that the national coach wanted to have discussed, after all, the DFB women contest between February 17th and 23rd at the Arnold Clark Cup in England a top-class invitation tournament with games against Spain, Canada and EM host England. Full stadiums and top-class games are expected.
Plenty of World Cup starting places will be awarded at the Asia Cup
This is the stark contrast to a tournament in which the qualification places for the next women’s World Cup in 2023 in Australia and New Zealand are currently being played out – and which is rather under the radar even for Voss-Tecklenburg and not by a DFB trainer either observed on the spot: the AFC Women’s Asian Cup in India.
There the group phase with initially twelve teams is over, on Sunday (01/30/2022) the quarter-finals are coming up. The pairings are as follows: Australia vs. South Korea, Japan vs. Thailand, China vs. Vietnam, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) vs. the Philippines.
The special thing about it is that all quarter-finalists have a good chance of playing in the World Cup, despite the sometimes glaring differences in performance. The Australians, who belong to the Asian confederation AFC, are already seeded as World Cup hosts, and Asia has five permanent places and two more play-off places that will be awarded at this tournament. Even the quarter-final losers are still fighting for two secure starting places in summer 2023.
Outsiders like the Philippines hope
For outsiders like the Philippines, that’s a huge incentive. “We won two Asian Cup games for the first time in history. Every time we do something new and make a bit of history, it’s fantastic for the team and the country.”, said their coach, the Australian Alen Stajcic, looking forward to the quarterfinals against Taiwan: “I know they were a superpower in the 80s and in the early days of international women’s football.”
Observers can’t help but get the impression that the level of the Asian teams is very different. Sure, Japan and China, who have been promoting women’s and girls’ football professionally for decades and have the appropriate structures, can always keep up with the USA or Canada and the top nations in Europe, but the rest can hardly.
The Iranian team is denied the first sense of achievement
In addition, the mood in the Indian venues is modest, according to accredited persons. The corona pandemic is also affecting this event. Hosts India, of all places, had to withdraw their team after a game after a corona outbreak.
It was also bitter for Iran, whose women’s national team had completely disappeared from the scene for two years, then, after being rebuilt under the activist and national coach Maryam Irandoost, sensationally survived the pre-qualification in Uzbekistan – and at the Asian Cup with a tenaciously defended 0: 0 just started against India. Although the Iranian media is fixated on the men who just qualified for the World Cup in Qatar, it was a huge achievement for the women.
However, this point was erased on the green table after the Indian withdrawal, after which the brave players from Iran learned a lot from both China (0:7) and Taiwan (0:4). That meant the early journey home. Despite only one point and 2:8 goals, Vietnam still made it into the quarter-finals, where the encounter against China should now become a lesson.