体坛英语新闻：Roundup of Algarve Cup: China's "possession football" shows progress but more needed

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China's head coach Hao Wei also saw the gap. "The progress can be seen this year. But it is far from what I plan to achieve," said he.

It's a challenging job for Hao as China has a much smaller football population than the world's powerhouses.

"You can calculate it. There are 15 regional teams in China. Each has about 20 players. That's where I choose to build the national team," said Hao.

By contrast, Japan has 30,000 players registered in football association according to last year's figures. Germany has more than one million and the USA has three million.

The smaller youth pool no doubt can limit the quality of players. And that make it more difficult to play a ball control match.

"Possession football" is a world's trend today and maybe a good choice for China. But the basics to play this high level football is that the players must grasp the mature skills to pick up, pass and move the ball.

And the skills are learned from the youth training camp. It's usually too late to start it in a senior team.

But that's what Hao Wei does now. He has tried to bring the new idea and strategy to his players, who have few chances to practice it in their regional teams.

"The difficulty now is we always keep what we have but make slow progress," said Pu Wei, the only current player who had been a member of the 1999 World Cup runners-up team.

"The players always forget what they learn in the national team after going back to regional sides. When they return, we have to repeat some old things," she added.

However, that seems the only choice for Chinese women football. Japan, with the similar physical condition, won the World Cup in 2011 with their passing-style football. That can be seen as a boost for China to stick to the technique-oriented football.

The direction is promising, but lessons should also be learned.

Ma Xiaoxu has played under eight different head coaches in her eight-year period at national team.

"Japan started women football much late than us. We were the better side in many years. But in recent years, they insist on one mode under one coach no matter wins or losses," said Ma.

"But we always change coaches once the results are not good in one tournament," she added.

"What we need now is consistency. Based on this, we must enhance the grassroots. Once there are more girls to play football, I believe we can do it."