Official 2019 Nadeshiko Japan Thread [R] - なでしこジャパン（英語スレッド）

I can't further comment, because I am going out to work, but I am impressed: I thought we were going to deploy our best 11 for SheBelievesCup, but there are some missing pieces (most notably in the front line: Iwabuchi, Mina Tanaka...) and some unexpected names that obviously Takakura wants to try out, even if she already saw some of them in recent camps (Risako Oga, Miyagawa, Matsubara, Ikejiri (!), Kobayashi (!), Endo (!!)).

I never was so much impressed by Miura, when she played in NT, but Takakura insists, so she has to see something (and she could even take her team-mate Rin Sumida's place in the roster).

I am sad that Mizuho Sakaguchi's "conditions" are still considered sub-optimal. I hope she fully recovers for WWC.

The other unexpected thing, in my eyes, is Erina Yamane's comeback. I thought she wasn't in Takakura's picture anymore, but of course Takakura wants to give another look at her and give her a chance. Can it be a factor that USA can suffer "big" GK?

 

My idea, before seeing this roster, was that the about 4 months leading to WWC would have been used mostly to refine team chemistry and tactics and that actually finalizing the roster would have just needed three or four fringe-decisions.

It looks like Takakura wants to try out many different players instead and that she wants to give chances to a lot of players; theoretically it makes sense: you can't integrate a player in a team in just a few weeks, so you have to give a try to anyone who can have even a remote chance to make the roster. You actually will bring just 2-3 players at max in France, out of the dozens you tried, but those 2-3 who will peak at the right moment to be considered for the roster will anyway have experience with the team.

I anyway would have liked that most of the virtual "starters" could get a chance to clash vs the strongest teams in the women's game. It's true that we'll have other important friendly games leading to WWC (vs Germany, vs France...), but this mini-tournament vs USA, England and Brazil looked like a good opportunity to test how we can approach such teams in our best conditions.
Unless Takakura actually wants to play a "hiding game" and is trying to keep her cards close to the vest: maybe it's not a coincidence that most of the missing players are FWs? Maybe Takakura doesn't want to give away our offensive strategies too soon? Maybe she even wants opponent teams to grow a sense of overconfidence from playing vs an experimental Japan (basically the way she used ToN 2018 as just a training tool, while Australia saw a very different team when it really counted, at Asian Cup)?

 

Yuki Nagasato included in the Aussie-W-League Best XI team:

PFA’s W-League Team of the Season includes five Chicago Red Stars, including Katie Naughton, Nikki Stanton, Yuki Nagasato, Sam Kerr and Danielle Colaprico. pic.twitter.com/CS9ELUHSI7

— John D. Halloran (@JohnDHalloran) February 15, 2019

 

That's also my point of view.

Out of curiosity, @Manchester Nadeshiko: are you going to Algarve Cup, since you had planned in advance to go, before knowing Japan wasn't going to take part, or did you manage to cancel the trip without losing too much money?

 

Well, if some of the 23 teams that won't actually win the cup will have anyway reached some kind of overachievement (Jamaica in quarters, anyone?) they could maybe skip the actual "despair phase".

 

While Aussie W-League season just ended, with no Japanese player in the grand final (for records, Sydney beat Perth by 4-2), European Leagues resumed after the winter break (some didn't actually have a break at all).

- Division 1 Féminine: nothing new in the last weeks, for what concerns the league itself. OL and PSG keep winning their respective games (OL actually by "just" 1-0 last Saturday vs Lille) and leading the rankings. PSG are ahead of OL at this moment, but it's because OL has a game in hand to them. Anyway, the league looks more open that it have ever been in the latest years.
The real news are about Coupe de France: a pair weeks ago, OL and PSG did clash early, in the quarters instead of in the final, and OL has beaten PSG by 1-0 in a match that had a nightmare refereeing and quite rough physical game by both parts (the score looked anyway fair).

- Frauen Bundesliga: Borussia Mönchengladbach keep losing every game that's thrown to them, yesterday it was an home loss by 1-4 vs Sand; but the big news are that Keiko Kodama is back on the pitch after her longtime injury!!! You can see in this report of the game that she was on the pitch and that she played for 66' minutes. About at the same minute (65') Hikaru Naomoto was being subbed in instead, in the game easily won by her Freiburg SC vs Bayer Leverkusen by 6-0. No goals by Hikaru, her team keeps standing in 6th position in the chart.

- Liga Femenina: no game actually played this last week-end (not sure why), but on Valentine's Day, the 14th, Real Betis tied a game by 2-2 vs Athletic Bilbao and they are now standing in 4th position (in a league of 16 clubs!). New/old NT member Erina Yamane was on the pitch. The day before, Albacete had beaten Rayo Vallecano by 2-1, putting themselves in 10th position: the first goal, that had tied the initial advantage by the host team, had been scored by our Tomo Matsukawa.

Lastly: still no schedule available for upcoming 2019 NWSL season, but there are vague news that Sky Blue FC (where Kawasumi should play) are doing something to get better facilities and better general organization (you know, the one that had made most players, including some young prospects, leave the club). We're going to see how the situation develops. Kawasumi hasn't been called for SheBelieves Cup, so maybe she can plan what to do and if actually setting to play in New Jersey.

 

Funny random fact about Midori Isokane: we had found, way back in 2012, that early even goofier versions of Google Translator from those times had her name changed into "Green Abalone Scraper"!

I would really like to get the chance to randomly meet Nadeshiko players while at work! Great story, @pierre bezukhov.

Isokane was a good central defender and she was occasionaly scoring nice headers from CK. I assume she now left football, didn't she?