Football bronze for China

China beat Korea 2-0 at Qatar Sports Club on Wednesday to take bronze medal in the women's football tournament. A double by Wang Kun did the trick, the defender scoring in the 40th and 60th minutes.

After the game, China captain Wei Pu said, "I'm not satisfied with bronze medal. We were here for gold medals. I'm not happy to be the third in the Games. Though we won the match, but we didn't perform well today. We had a problem in midfield and forwards. Next target for us is the Women's World Cup 2007. But we should improve a lot in our skills for that. We'll do our best there which we failed to do at Doha."

Team coach Ma Liangxing said, "We had expected for the Chinese women's football team to be champions, but it didn't happen. So we were under a lot of pressure today. It was wonderful that we would win this match and withstand today's pressure.

"For the Chinese women's football team in the past we have won gold or silver. This time we only got bronze, however, for the young players on the team this is a great experience.

Korea's coach An Jong Goan said, "I believe the reason why we lost is because we didn't make use of our scoring chances early in the first half. Our players condition wasn't that good going into the match, so we will have to do some video analysis of that, but conditioning was a problem.

Analysing their overall performance at Doha 2006, he said, "There is no real achievement to speak of. But if I had to come up with one it would be the growth of our players. I think we lack in skills, ball skills and dribbling.

"The big reason is that most of our players didn't start out in elementary school, they started too late. It will be very important in the future to have players starting earlier in elementary school stages. We also need more experience playing overseas against strong teams in Europe and places like that. The best way to practise is to play matches."

15th Asian Games, Doha