It will be a difficult task for the Chinese women's soccer team to secure a berth of the 2012 London Olympic Games, as only two slots were allocated to Asia, but they are not hopeless.

The performance of the Chinese team at the four-nation tourney made the home crowd saw a glimmer of hope.

"We made some improvement after the Asian Games," said Li Xiaopeng, coach of the Chinese women's team. "I'm satisfied with the performance."

China, standing 11th in the FIFA ranking, finished the third in the tournament, while the U.S. team won the title and Canada took the second.

China lost to world No. 1 the United States 2-0 on Tuesday. They came from behind to beat world No. 4 Sweden 2-1 on Sunday and lost to world No. 9 Canada 3-2 last Friday.

"We have no advantage when playing with world top 10 teams," said Li. "So the results were quite normal."

As the weakest team in the tourney, China's performance did not disappoint the home crowd and actually, compared with two months ago in the Asiad, they seemed like a brand new team by showing obvious progress in their attacks and team work.

The most important thing is the team now has a more positive mental outlook than in the Asian Games.

"Although we lost the game, there are some bright sides," said Li. "The players were not nervous when we were behind and they played aggressively, though still not aggressively enough."

Li took the charge of the team in last August after the "steel roses" failed to qualify for the World Cup in Germany for the first time and former coach Shang Ruihua resigned.

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