The Shanghai Paralympic football team since 2004 has seen a generation of players live happier lives after joining the sport.

Yang Ye, a former Paralympian who retired due to an Achilles tendon rupture, founded the team and has been organizing it ever since.

"When we first started, we had no more than 10 players as the game only requires seven people for a team. Most of us had experience with Paralympic sports," Yang said.

Difficult as it was, the team and some of its players worked hard to be selected for the national team for major events such as the Beijing Olympics and Asian Games.

In later years, the team expanded to recruit people, who, diagnosed of cerebral palsy, had never been in the sport and thus had to start from scratch.

"Even when the thrill of the game vanishes someday, we will never give up on the joy of life," Yang said.

Overcoming the odds

Paralympic football is no longer an official event in the upcoming Tokyo Paralympic Games, neither will it appear three years later in Paris.

Domestically, the event encountered a similar fate in 2011 following the 8th National Paralympic Games, resulting in a few teams in China coming to the end of their journey, but not the Shanghai team.

They do not train as much as they used to now, but they have persisted to train every weekend till today.

"What we owe to football is the healthy mentality it gives us. We gain confidence that helps us blend into society," said Wang Junwei, a team member.

(With input from thepaper.cn)