Yes, I also wonder who this Kitamoto is, considering that I don't remember having heard about her in the last Nadeshiko League... Meanwhile Montpellier Hérault SC lost (just 1-0, but lost anyway ) vs OL juggernaut... I had hopes that MHSC could have fighted for the league till the end, but they keep losing or just drawing vs top teams... Now I guess that only by winning next turn home vs Juvisy they can keep hoping to play Champions' League next year. Come on, girls! Juvisy has great players (Thiney over all), but you'll play on home turf (maybe you'll even have Kyra34 vocal support... ): you can make it! Don't give up! Gambare Rumi, gambare Aya!!! I can't wait to watch the Ballon d'Or Gala, while wishing I won't end up disappointed (crossing fingers): it seems like FIFA will broadcast it live for free (!!!)(read here: http://www.fifa.com/ballondor/video/live/index.html?intcmp=housead_ballondor_livecoverage_en_300x250). They just published the list of country where the live coverage won't be available, and Italy is not on the list, Yay!!! ^__^ (although, along with most of the Africa continent, it seems like the coverage won't be available in France and Japan I wonder why... http://www.fifa.com/ballondor/video/live/information.html Sorry for most contributors on this thread... I'll try to keep you updated on this thread while I follow the live gala, if you want...)
http://www.fifa.com/ballondor/video/video=1564462/index.html Marta is showed twice in the video vs Sawa/Wambach just once... Please, don't do this to me... I am dying with the waiting, and every lil signal can bring be from joy to pain and viceversa... "-_- Please, I need it's already tomorrow. Anything is better than this excruciating wait...
sc-f ..... I bet you have an email address for her? Or maybe her agent. Anyway this collection is a gift from a BigSoccer fan: Its her famous PK seen by thousands (and millions on TV) from: 1. High in the Stadium (unusual angle) 2. San_Francisco 3. Los_Angeles 4. Frankfurt Also, I have a question. Your article says she is from Hokkaido, that cold northern island. My question: is that obvious to all Japanese? (ie do people from Hokkaido look a bit different?). Sorry for what must be a very boring question. I think Kitamoto is from Hokkaido too.
Just leaving YouTube and I see a new video which is Tokiwagi losing to NTV Menina in the u-18 Cup. The Menina have a good left winger....
Is Menina Beleza's junior squad? Wow, Nakada and Kyokawa didn't took it so well: they were crying like fountains...
I am watching the video on the 2011 Nadeshiko League posted at the second page of this tread (still midway through it, since it's very long, but thanks again for posting it ). Since I didn't follow the league closely, there are some questions still pounding in my head. Hopely you guys can aswer some of them. - How INAC could assemble such a strong team this year? They had never won the league before, but this year they won it "easily" with 7 Nadeshiko players and one from South Korea NT also. - Why Sawa wasn't team captain? Maybe because she joined them only last year? Or maybe because of some sense of modesty? - I read here that Sawa left NTV for Kobe because her former club didn't offer her a professional contract. Are there more players in L-League with professional contracts besides Sawa? Or all the others are like Iwashimizu and Sakaguchi, who work during the day? Thanks in advance, and I promisse to be more participative in these discussions...
I guess I can answer quite satisfactorily to most of your questions. Before WWC 2011 victory, it was quite a bad time for women's club football in Japan (not only in Japan, really, but that's another question); popularity had constantly gone down in years and most sponsors kept dis-investing from it. In 2010 Sawa had just come back from her second american experience in Washington Freedom (that was going to become MagicJack and trasfer in Florida, and then disbanded this year) and she signed back for her old japanese club NTV Beleza. Beleza (sponsored by Nippon Television, NTV) was one of the few clubs in Japan (maybe the only one) that could grant a professional contract to most of it players, and that's how it won something like a dozen of the last years' Nadeshiko leagues. Basically, if you were a football player in Japan and you wanted to play professionally, you had to go in Europe or in USA or you had to play for Beleza (maybe a pair of other clubs in Japan grant pro-contracts to their big stars, but not to the most of their players for sure). Now, I am not sure why, probably because of the bad moment both in economy and in women's football (no-one could foresee the 2011 boom with WWC victory ), in 2010 NTV decided not to grant most of its pro-contracts anymore. meanwhile INAC (that is sponsored by a sort of group of companies), made the move trying to become "the big club", by offering pro-status: not sure why either; maybe to celebrate 10th anniversary of foundation (the club was founded in 2001), maybe to achieve the constant grow in investments and results that the club had reached in those ten years of history, maybe simply because NTV move had opened the chance to take its place (and, if upcoming WWC 2011 had simply gone decently, it could have been a good investment anyway)... Anyway, in 2011 at least 3 top NTV players (Kinga, Ohno, Sawa), plus winner coach Kei Hoshikawa, passed from NTV to INAC. INAC also offered a contract to South Korean young star Ji So-Yun and to another SK player, being the only Nadeshiko League club with foreign players. Obviously NTV's dis-investment and INAC sponsors' investment completely turned the tables of Nadeshiko league: but it wasn't enough to explain what was going to happen in 2011 season; NTV had still a top-level junior team, putting out quality young players for the senior team; and then some stars had remained in Beleza anyway, like young Iwabuchi or Iwashimizu (probably Iwashimizu remained because, although she hadn't a pro-contract, she had a good job she liked in Nippon Television itself). The real key to make INAC actually unbeatable was the mix of the newcomer aces and the "old" players that had reached some success in the previous seasons: Kaihori and Kawasumi had played in INAC since 2008, Tanaka and Takase since 2009. It was especially Kawasumi who made the "bridge" between those two groups: Kawasumi had suffered a serious injury, in 2009 if I am not wrong; then she had become a fixture of the team. If she was chosen as a captain, it was not only because she had much more "service" in INAC than Sawa, but also because of her personality, her friendly and joyful attitude, her strong character and her "social" gift. Think about it: INAC had two groups: the established INAC group, that though was formed in general by younger and more unexperienced players, and the big stars coming from another club or from abroad. It could have been easy to fail in properly mixing this two groups and INAC "old" players could have felt overwhelmed by the big stars taking the place of previous members of the team. Kawasumi started showing right away how much she excelled in blending these two groups together, both socially and on the pitch: that's another reason because she was deservingly and undisputingly the captain (and Sawa would have never showed an arrogance in coming from another team and pretending the captain armband: you should know that it isn't in her character; she was happy instead that the captain was Kawasumi and she found a perfect harmony with her). There was a good article, about Kawasumi's role in INAC, in the Asahi Shimbun archive: you can look for it; if you don't find it, just ask me and I'll help. I am not sure if some other players in Nadeshiko league, besides INAC's ones, have full professional contracts. I guess Miyama probably works during the day, but "for the club" in some way. But here I guess you should ask to japanese friends on this thread, who are surely more informed than me. Also I could have got something wrong or incomplete in my explanation above, so I also ask japanese friends to correct me if I said anything inaccurate.
I watched the match on JFA TV. Menina overcame Tokiwagi in possession thanks to their technical skills and much swift movements even though they mostly consisted of U-17 NT members. I was fascinated with their short passing tactics. Dokou, Shimizu (DF), Sumida (defensive MF), Momiki (#10 assisted the goal) and Toriumi (the pony tail left side FW) are all 15 years old and Nakazato (#7 defensive MF, the goal scorere) is 17 and already played at Beleza's games.
Your analysis is superb and you're much better informed than I. As for NTV Beleza, I have another side story, but this is mostly about men's football history in Japan. At the beginning of J-League, Tokyo Verdy was the most popular team in the league、and the owner of Verdy - Yomiuri group - who owned the most popular baseball team - Yomiuri Giants (aka. Kyojin) - wanted to make another Kyojin in football too. Kawabuchi, J-League founder, didn't accept their ambition. Concretely speaking, he didn't allow them to use Yomiuri's name on the club, saying it is against J-League ideal, then Verdy's decline began. Yomiuri newspapers and Yomiuri Land withdrew from Verdy, and only NTV (one of Yomiuri groups) took over it. Subsequently, most Japanese football fans have some hostility to Verdy, and it has been having a lasting effect on NTV teams still now. In fact, NTV itself withdrew from it a few years ago, so I don't know why Beleza and Menina is still called NTV now. Anyway, it is certain that their current financial situation is very unstable.
I have just managed to find the article you mentioned. And thanks for your clarifying explanation. It seems women's football is really unstable and a lot of teams are forced to fold. In Brazil, for instance, there isn't even a league yet, and there were a huge step back these days as Santos ladies (continental champions in 2009 and 2010) was disbanded. A national league seems to be further away than ever. Maybe they can learn something with the Japanese. On the other side, I'm really glad to see this boom in the Nadeshiko League and I hope the Player of the Year award goes to its rightful owner in a few hours
Yes I had noticed that Menina's players seemed to be very young. That's probably also why Nakada & Co. were crying so much: not just for the loss, but because they were likely ashamed for losing to players so much younger than them, that they could basically consider like children. But I'd say there's no shame in losing to so good technical players, although very very young. In the end, both U-19 and U-16 Nadeshiko team just won ACF title, so they probably have similar power. Thank you very much for the insightful story. In fact, it's about men's football, but it ends being about women's football as much. And it fills a gap in my analysis, because, as I said, I had no exact idea about why NTV had withdrew from "pro" women's football. That's exactly what I meant when I was saying that people living in Japan had for sure some info that I was missing. Thanks again. Aww, Santos Ladies disbanding is sad news for women's football. It was the main contributor to brazilian National Team, if I am not wrong, and when an important club like this one dies, it's bad for all world's women's football mouvement. I said before that semi-pro status is part of women's football charm, but, on the other way, this sport can't constantly live on the verge of collapse... Basically, everywhere in the world women's football is in crisis, despite a WWC that's been deservedly called "for the ages". The only country were women's football seems to be really solid, prosperous and maybe even quite rich, is Germany, where a solid players' base meets support from males' big clubs. For the rest, France is healthy, but it seems to me that football there really lacks communication and media interest. Scandinavian countries (Sverige, Norge, Denmark, Finland, Iceland) have a solid sport culture and their leagues seem to be here to stay, but they somehow work "below surface" and without much international buzz. Don't even get me started about USA, where the biggest players' base in the world seems to be totally unable to generate a decent pro-league and the mouvement seems to constantly need excitement-injections from huge NT performances to survive. A league needing that is not healthy for sure. They should have had 8 teams to get a decent league, they started with 7, they had 6 in 2010 and now, after MagicJack's death, they are at 5. I mean, how can you support a league with 5 teams??? Just the same faces keeping playing each other for... a month? Two months? and in the end: "Wow, guys, we just finished... 5th *thrilled*... that means... oh... last ones? *frowns*" Come on, how can supporters take that seriously? Here at my home, in Italy, things don't seem to get better. you could think that one of the more solid fan bases in the world for males' football should suggest otherwise, but in fact male football drains all of the resources and also fuels a lot of bias against women's football (I guess my country is one of the most mysoginous in the world, although not always in an open way). Football clubs in Italy aren't usually supported by big males' clubs and mostly thrive instead on the interest of little provincial towns (Bardolino, Torres, Chiasiellis), outside the flow of money and media/supporters' interest of big towns. The players' base is constantly dropping down, and girls who practice team-sports prefer playing volley or basket (or even some other marginal sports, instead of football). The fact that, since the beginning of big international competitions, National Team never achieved any meaningful result doesn't help for sure: not only Italy doesn't even normally manage to take part in WWC or Olympics (in 2011 they lost the WWC play-off to USA), but they are way behind in Europe also and they never won an european title (best result was a pair of second places): we lived on isolated great players, like Morace or Panico, but, even in Europe only, Germany, France, England and most of the scandinavian countries are way ahead of us. In Japan, things seem to be good at the moment, but, as many people (Sasaki and Sawa between others) pointed out, the interest for Nadeshiko League could drop down as much rapidly as it raised, and the difficult task now is exploiting the moment to found the women's football in Japan on a solid basis. (there were also a series of interesting articles on Asahi Shimbun about all that: it's a shame that, starting with the end of November, Asahi Shimbun decided to limit the number of free accesses to its archives to 5 in a month... sigh) Well, I'm going to follow all of it live. Sawa should be in Switzerland now: I wonder when exactly she'll get to take a nap. Is her presence requested at the press conference at 14:00 (that would correspond to about 5 am in Japan)? She left Japan in the morning, local time, and she likely arrived in Europe also in the morning... she'll have to find the time to sleep for some hours, or she risks falling asleep during the Gala... ^__^
Yes, definitely expect her to be there. From what I remember from previous years, the nominated players each make a short statement and answer questions.
UPDATE! 7.25 CET - Norio Sasaki has been named the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Women's football having led Japan to the FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany last year.
Congratulations, Norio Sasaki, FIFA Women Coach of the Year! Congratulations, Homare Sawa, FIFA Women Player of the Year!
Sasaki's family ..the two women being obviously his wife and his daughter... and both of them in a kimono! Kimono festival!!!
But the more important woman in Kimono of the Gala was... HOMARE SAWA! If I could I'd found a shrine to her, here on this thread and everywhere... These pics shows that she managed to smile at least for some seconds, although she was otherwise very serious and overwhelmed by her role. I wanted to show here a picture of her smiling anyway. ^__^ Please, also notice Marta's expression on the left. No comment.