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Road to Rio Olympics is tough for women's soccer, says Chinese coach Bini

Xinhua, January 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Frenchman and Chinese head coach Bruno Bini showed his worries about the tight schedule of Asian qualifications on Wednesday as a twenty-player women's squad has to play five games in ten days in order to gain a ticket for the Rio Olympic soccer tournament.

Bini, who has steered the French team to a fourth finish at the 2011 World Cup as well as the London Olympic Games, will lead China to kick-off the Shenzhen Four-nation Tournament on Thursday, which is a good chance to test his strategy and regular combinations for the Olympic task.

"The tournament is a very good period to prepare for the Olympics," said Bini. His side will play Mexico in the opening match and then to meet the regional competitors Vietnam and South Korea, who are also opponents of the Chinese team in the Olympic qualifications to be staged on Feb.29.

"The Chinese team is in a good shape now. The training since January 6th is mainly on the physical and tactical stage. After the three matches here, we will go to France for another period of preparation," said Bini. He replaced Hao Wei after the 2015 World Cup to become the 15th head coach of the Chinese women's side and third foreigner for that job.

The tournament in Shenzhen is the last one for Chinese team to play before the Olympic battle. They will set up a three-week training camp in France later this month and then fly to Japan for the six-team qualifications including the other three powerhouses Japan, Australia and DPR Korea. However, only two of them with highest points after five matches will go to Rio 2016.

"As we know, the men's qualifications in Asia has been kicked off. The team who can go to Rio Olympics have 23 players and play six matches in fifteen days," said Bini.

"However, for women's side, each team can only have 20 players but to play five games in ten days, which is very tough," he added.

China reached its first quarterfinal of the World Cup in eight years in Canada last June, but was still reckoned underdog in Asia's qualifications for Rio 2016.

With about one month to go before Olympics qualifications slated from Feb.29 to March.9, the Frenchman foresaw an uphill battle in vying for the two tickets on offer against World Cup runners-up Japan and world No. 9 Australia.

But he kept faith that China can upset the favourites.

"There are three teams ranked higher than us," said Bini, referring to Japan, DPR Korea and Australia.

"But we three (along with Vietnam and South Korea) in Shenzhen can reach an agreement, which is to prevent them from success." Endit