People's Daily Online, Beijing, May 23 (Reporter Ou Xingrong) On the afternoon of the 23rd, the Chinese Football Association organized a media meeting for the new head coach of the Chinese Women's Football Team, Ante Milicic, at the Xianghe National Football Training Base. Milicic thanked the Chinese Football Association for providing him with the opportunity to coach in his opening speech. He and the coaching team are looking forward to the next journey. He also knows that as the head coach of the Chinese women's football team, he has a great responsibility and carries the expectations of thousands of people.

On May 23, Ante Milicic made a speech at the media meeting. Photographed by Jia Haocheng, reporter of Xinhua News Agency

Speaking of the team leadership goal set by the Chinese Football Association for him, Milicic said that when the Chinese Football Association interviewed him, they discussed their expectations and hopes for him. The first major competition task was to prepare for the 2026 Asian Cup. The current task is to spend as much time as possible to inspect the team members, make use of collective training to let the players get familiar with each other, adapt technical and tactical play, and do a good job in related preparations.

As for the first list of Chinese women's football players recruited after taking office, Milicic said that because of time problems, he and the coach team can only watch the videos and videos of women's Super League matches and previous matches of the national team to determine the candidates, and cannot go to the match site to inspect the players. "In this phase of intensive training, we hope to have a preliminary run in with the team in 7 to 10 days, so that the coach team can have more contact with the team members, and the team members can understand the working methods and ideas of the coach team."

Milicic once led the Australian women's football team to compete with the Chinese women's football team. He praised the Chinese women's football team for its strong discipline, active defense and strong spiritual strength. He will lead the team to make some adjustments according to his own coaching style, which will make the team play more actively, improve the team's ball control rate, and give more opportunities for players with technical characteristics on the offensive side to handle the ball. "It's only one week before the warm-up match with the Australian Women's Football Team, and it's hard to make big changes in the short term, but we will try our best to use the training time every day to run in, and use the video analysis class to instill the team concept into the team members, so as to achieve the best."

At present, China's women's football ranks 19th in the world and 4th in Asia. Milicic said that he did not count on the current world ranking of the Chinese women's football team. He would lead the team to train hard and let the team return to its proper position. Milicic also said that the national team needs fresh blood. They represent the future of the team, but young players need to first establish themselves in the league and the club they belong to. During the two years of preparation for the Asian Cup, he hoped that young players could be recruited through their outstanding performance in the league, so that they could have 15-20 international competitions and experience, so that they could grow. "This represents not only personal progress, but also the progress of the whole team."

In the next two years, the Chinese women's football team will face the "empty window period" of the competition. In view of this situation, Milicic said that he would certainly spare no effort to organize a series of international events for the team to participate, which also depends on the joint efforts of the Chinese Football Association and various clubs to give players more training opportunities. He also hopes to maintain good cooperation and communication between the national team and the club

Speaking of the gap between the current Chinese women's football team and the world's advanced level, Milicic believed that, if the Women's Premier League was taken as a reference, the Chinese women's football team had two players (Wang Shuang at Spurs and Li Mengwen at Brighton) playing there, but their playing time was not much. The players playing there for the Australian women's football team were basically the main players in the team, and the answer was obvious. The criteria for selecting players for national teams around the world are basically similar, that is, to give priority to the best players from the best clubs in the highest level leagues. "My job is to provide high level training to the players when they come to the national team, and give feedback to the players so that they can play better when they return to the club."

Milicic also said that the youth training is very important for the construction of the national team, and players aged 17 to 19 need high-level competition training. He hopes that the national team can help the club's youth training, so that more young players can enter the national team's talent selection vision, and the club can also benefit from it.

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