Players Look to Solve Chinese Puzzle

The Chinese women’s team is practicing, divided into perfect rows, performing wu shu, tai chi and various soccer drills in unison, each player stone-faced, committed. It’s for an Adidas commercial, but, for the Chinese, it’s no act.

The rhythmic thumping of soccer balls can be heard in the apartments above, waking United States midfielder Aly Wagner. She rousts several teammates out of bed. Still wiping the sleep from their eyes, they stagger down to the field to watch, transfixed by the Chinese regimentation.

China’s star forward, Sun Wen, breaks out of her line, approaches Wagner in a high-noon pose, performs several elaborate tricks with the ball and then kicks it to her, as if to say, “Show me what you’ve got.”

Words appear on the television screen.

“To be continued.”

*

It’s nervous time in the Chinese camp as they prepare for their second game in the Women’s World Cup, tonight against Australia in the Home Depot Center at Carson.

It’s always nervous time in the Chinese camp.

This might be apocryphal, but the story is told in China of the male soccer player so devastated because his team let down the country by failing to qualify for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that he lapsed into a coma that lasted for months.

Fewer people in China are as interested in the women’s team, but the followers are no less intense. When the Chinese lost at home in the quarterfinals of the first women’s world championship in 1991, fans stoned the coach’s house.

Although the Chinese women have remained one of the world’s most talented teams, they have never won the World Cup or the Olympic gold medal. They came closest in the 1999 World Cup, losing to the United States, 5-4, on penalty kicks at the Rose Bowl.

Tony DiCicco, the U.S. women’s coach in 1999 who is serving as an analyst on the West Coast for ESPN during the World Cup, calls the Chinese “the Buffalo Bills” of women’s soccer.

Many experts predicted this would be the year of the Chinese, with the World Cup again on their soil. Chinese officials expected crowds of 70,000 to back the team for its games. That was before the SARS outbreak, which caused FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, to move the tournament to the U.S.

But even before then, there were troubling signs for the Chinese. FIFA ranks them No. 4 behind the U.S., Norway and Germany despite the fact the Chinese are no longer dominant even in Asia, losing three years in a row to North Korea.

After the loss in the Asian Championships last year, Chinese officials brought back former coach Ma Yuan’an as an advisor to the current coach, Ma Liangxing. Yuan’an, who coached the team in the 1995 and 1999 World Cups, had either retired or been retired, depending on who tells the story, after China failed to advance beyond the first round in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

That sort of arrangement worked for Brazil in the men’s World Cup in 1994, when the federation recalled legendary coach Mario Zagallo to advise Carlos Alberto Parreira. The Brazilians won.

On the other hand, DiCicco said it wouldn’t have worked if he had been asked to assist U.S. Coach April Heinrichs. That’s the reason he’s commenting for ESPN from the West instead of the East, where the U.S. is playing its opening games.

“I expect if I was hanging around April’s team, that would create tension,” DiCicco said.

Because of cultural and language differences, it’s difficult for outsiders to determine whether two coaches are better than one for China.

“It seems to be a happy camp,” DiCicco said.

But a large contingent of Chinese media at Carson is constantly probing the relationship between Old Ma, as they call the former coach, and Little Ma, as they call the current coach. Their questions were particularly pointed after the team’s lackluster performance in a 1-0 victory over Ghana on Sunday night. China had beaten Ghana, 7-0, in the 1999 World Cup.

To be continued?

“We’re in for a hard time if we continue playing like this,” Sun acknowledged.

*

Sun, not Mia Hamm or Michelle Akers or Brandi Chastain, won the Golden Ball as the most valuable player of the 1999 World Cup even in a losing effort. Knee injuries hindered her when she played for the Atlanta Beat in the WUSA, but now, without a knee brace, she again is playing at a high level.

DiCicco said Sun, 30, doesn’t have the same burst of speed she once had, but, he said, “she stills sees the game better than 99% of the players in the world.”

That was apparent in the victory over Ghana, when she not only dictated the pace of the Chinese offense but scored.

More important for China will be her leadership. If not friction, there is at least indecision in the Chinese camp over whether to play the veterans that Old Ma prefers or the younger players that Little Ma prefers. Forward Han Duan, who, at 20, is considered a rising Sun, was benched after 58 minutes against Ghana.

Although Sun’s name is pronounced Some Way, she was known as Sunny to her Atlanta teammates. She once paid tribute to them by standing in front of the team bus and singing, “The Wind Beneath My Wings.”

“There may be subplots, but she’s the kind of player who can blend the players together,” said Lauren Gregg, an assistant to DiCicco in 1999. “She keeps her cool, stays at an even keel. But, if she has to, she’ll find a way to carry the team on her back.”

If China reaches the final Oct. 12 at Carson, if it does its part in making the World Cup rematch happen with the U.S., it will be because Sun found some way.

Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.