Official 2018 Nadeshiko Japan Thread [R] - なでしこジャパン（英語スレッド）

Oh, ok. I know that clubs aren't allow to use the international during FIFA windows, even if their tournament finished in advance, but probably, since the final of Asian Cup had already taken place on Friday, the FIFA window had been already closed, so Ji so-Yun, who had most likely come back in England soon after the 5th-place match, was allowed to play.

Saki was probably allowed to play too, but WCL's semi-final, in this case, was too much close to the final of Asian Cup 2 days before.

 

As usual, some updates from the clubs where our overseas players currently are:

- I won't add much about OL, since @Manchester Nadeshiko and @KAPIJXM already updated us about their Champions' League semifinal. I guess a 0-0 score in Manchester can be considered a decent result, but the second leg remains very open. Wolfsburg are virtually already in the final, so we're going to see if we'll get a third final in three years for OL (and a repeat of the OL-Wolfsburg final from 2016) or if Manchester will somehow manage to make an upset happen (as strong as they can be considered, I guess Manchester City will anyway play the underdogs to the club that dominated Europe in the last two seasons).

- Talking about Champions' League, it's really hard to imagine that it was just 2015 when 1.FFC Frankfurt won that competition by defeating PSG in the final: three years later, the ruins of that team are completely collapsing in Frauen-Bundesliga. Out of desperation, they even put Yokoyama on the pitch yesterday, just two days after her final at AFC Asian Cup: she was subbed-in at 61' (you can see her shake hands with opponents at the end of the game in video-highlights), about 10 minutes after her team had gone behind by 0-1 in an home match vs 1.FFC Turbine Potsdam. Sadly, the result stayed. Ok, Kumi didn't play for very long at WAC, but you usually don't use a player who's back from a very demanding week of matches in a big international tournament just two days after the end of that tournament, when she's just joined the team, unless you're really hopeless: that's how Frankfurt is right now. They're now 6th in the rankings, and they really haven't much to ask from the rest of the season. I do wonder if they are serious about re-building the team or if wouldn't be better for Kumi to try and find another home...
Highlights: https://tv.dfb.de/video/highlights-1-ffc-frankfurt-vs-turbine-potsdam/21400/

- Meanwhile Erina Yamane collects another shutout, since yesterday Real Betis won by 0-1 an away game vs Madrid CFF and she was on the pitch the whole game. Since we found Yamashita as a probable starter, maybe it's too late for her to chase a place for WWC 2019, but anyway let's see if she keeps doing quite well in Liga Fémenina.

 

And a very good one at that!

I agree with most of what you said. Nadeshiko have always been a "possession team" (at least for as long as I followed them): the good news is that now they showed that they can also win games where they don't dominate possession; the bad news, of course, is that it's anyway more difficult for them to dominate possession as they were doing in the past, when they could sport supreme technical players as Miyama or Sawa (as an aside: another similarity between 2014 and 2018 Asian Cups is that in both circumstance we got the MVP award of the tournament: Miyama back then, Iwabuchi now; probably not a case that, despite very different ages, they were both veterans from 2011, the real "golden generation" of our football).

As @hirohiro mentioned, one of the problems is that Sakaguchi, while still being an exceptional player in many regards, doesn't use to hold the fort as well as she was doing in the past and gives away too many easy balls: she's not actually declining as much as other holding midfielders in the women's football (see an older and more and more aging Lloyd in USWNT), but we can't really count on her seamless contribute and we have to start taking some "bad days at the office" into account.

In my opinion, we have to work in two directions: 1) tinkering (a little, not as extensively as in the past two years) with personnel and formation to find ways to get back more possession vs "difficult" teams; 2) finding ways to "sting" more, with quick and unforgiving actions that can punish those teams that press us a lot and win possession but keep bouncing off our good defense. In this regard, the match vs Australia was a textbook one: yes, they out-possessed us and they out-shot us, but look at how much sharp and neat our two big chances in the game were: in both cases (Iwabuchi-Hasagawa in 1st half and Hasegawa-Yokoyama in 2nd half), we were suddenly in their box in the bat of an eyelash, we cut their defense in half and we subsequently had a powerful and accurate shot; in 1st half it was saved by GK with her fingertips, in 2nd half it was a goal. That's exactly the kind of actions that we have to be able to execute when we are under pressure from a good team: good technical players like Iwabuchi, Hasegawa, Yokoyama, or Nakajima (this last one if she's not in a day where she "pushes" it and randomly spreads balls all around the pitch) can do it, and can train to do it even better and more often. Other players (Mina Tanaka, Sugasawa), I am not sure about, since they don't have the same technical savvy (or they don't use to show it in key-games, when it most counts): but they can anyway be trained with the "concept".

In my opinion, this is a very important strategy to have in our bag of tricks, and one that can save our day even when things are looking quite bad for us.

I'll add that Hasegawa (and here I give credit once again to Pierre Bezuchov ) is in my opinion the perfect player for this kind of actions, especially for two qualities of her: scorching quickness and excellent technique. She's rapid enough to make fast transitions to opponent's half possible and her control of the ball gives her an edge over opponent defenders.
All of Nadeshiko Japan's team normally showcases superior technique, but some of Hasegawa's skills are on another level: for instance, look at her ability to trap the ball; she can basically tame all the passes, no matter how fast or lobbed they are.

A typical case is the action of our goal: did you notice, guys, that the action of our goal came from a direct long kick from our defense (I guess even from Yamashita, although I should check that)? Well, the long ball was dropping from the sky: Hasegawa just trapped it as if it was natural to her, directioned it out of reach from Aussie defenders, let it roll in front of her and then found the perfect assist for Yokoyama; all that in a single, quick, seamless action that took much more time to me to describe than for her to make. This is the kind of technique we need.

By the way: although it is "just for the eye", because the subsequent action wasn't very effective, if you want to look at some piece of technique that will make your heart beat, go back at Lechus7's highlights, skip at about 29':05", at look at what Hasegawa is able to do.

Well, I notice I wrote quite the essay too. Hope it's not too long to read for you, guys.

 

Yes, having a very good GK to complement our defensive package is essential to this kind of strategy, and this is one of the things that we often missed in the past. Let's hope Yamashita (who is still very young) has by now permanently reached a different level too (I remember some howlers from her in the past, and even in the final she anyway let the ball slip from her hands that would have led to PK: for sure she got better and better lately, but she's just 22 and she still has room for improvement ).

 

Hey, guys, I finally found a video with almost all of the award ceremony that most of us missed from Asahi-TV feed being cut.

I say "almost", because the first part, with Fair Play Award to Japan and MVP Award to Iwabuchi is still missing, but the sequence with medals and trophy for us is complete. Looks like the weather was quite cold and/or windy in Jordan, that night, because most girls look like they're freezing when they have to stand still (Sameshima, indeed, is wearing her trademark long sleeves! ).

Dozens of little details to notice, in this good HD video; I'll mention just one: look at Takakura's accurate manicure at about 10':24" at at her beautiful ring (a birthday present? ).

 

Mmm, I am not sure: I didn't find any specific mention of live coverage on the website, nor on main TV-channels schedules.

It is possible that some local channel covers it, but I've got no additional info about that so far.

I can furtherly look for info in the next days, although I have to say that, despite recent good result of our National Team, women's football doesn't get much coverage here in Italy.

Edit: of course, you'll have noticed the YouTube channel of the tournament, but it has just a promotional video, at the moment, and it doesn't mention any future updates.

 

Meanwhile, Kawasumi celebrates Asuna Tanaka's 30th birthday on her blog. I guess we were aware about the fact that she's corrently playing in South Korea, weren't we?

 

It seems like a good time like any other to rewatch this, isn't it? (Even if PK shooutout is just an abridged version)

 

Of course. It's just that lately we couldn't seem to add this direct football tactic to our repertoire (maybe because of the lack of that "individual brilliance" you were talking about) and this looked as a very important missing piece to our puzzle.
I agree that it anyway has to be just a tactic, while our general strategy has to remain possession-based "good football".

Yes, although I remember Sugasawa making a better use of her height around 2014-2015, when she was scoring much more with headers, both in the league and in NT. We will always be at a disadvantage vs "western" teams in that regard and for sure we can't become a team that relies on crossing high balls and look for the header, but I would like if we could make a better use of Sugasawa potential aerial game.

 

Sirtel, I am sorry: I did my best today to contact organization of the tournament but their e-mail address doesn't work (my mail is rejected because that address doesn't seem to exist) and their phone-number is apparently a fax!

I'll look around if anything surfaces in these days, while the tournament starts and goes on, but at the moment it looks like I can't really be of much help despite living in Italy. Oh, and I can't go checking in person either: Gradisca is anyway at about 400 Km from Milano and I can't really find the time to go there these days.

 

Actually, in this interview that was published on AFC website before the semi-finals, Yui says that she reached Senior National team about two years later that she was aiming for!
She looks so sweet on the surface, but actually she has to be the very competitive type and she admits that herself. Also, it looks like her transition to Senior NT didn't surprise anyone in her family or entourage.
Also, the relationship with Takakura seems really strong, if she uses the term "her children" while referring to her U-20 NT generation (but of course I am not sure if the word that was used in Japanese was equally connoted).
She agrees that speed on the pitch is one of her strong points, but she doesn't mention her technique also.

I just recently discovered that there was a whole series of interviews on the AFC website: of course, the most charming and fascinating interview is Sameshima's one , but there were others also (Rika Masuya, Mina Tanaka, Saori Ariyoshi, Rumi Utsugi; the latter was probably the only one that I had already posted here, just before the tournament). Maybe they could now be considered obsolete, for what concerns questions about the tournament itself, but I guess they can still contain useful or interesting informations.

(Also interesting it's this Alanna Kennedy's interview: apparently Aussies were hoping to dominate us physically, to score early goals, and to get revenge for 2014 final. I'd say their plan was obvious, but things didn't exactly go according to their plan ).

(For Korea/INAC fans, there must be also Ji So-Yun or Lee Min-A interviews somewhere on that list ).

 

I had forgotten that! Christiane Endler sure is something special: how many GKs can say they stopped a Miyama's PK? Maybe not even Solo.

 

Yes: probably you remember about U-17 WWC 2014 in Costa Rica, where Takakura, despite winning the whole tournament in style, was having fun playing girls in totally unpredictable positions. If I remember well, she had taken Rana Okuma, a striker at the time, and she had changed her into a Center-Back (position where she could exploit her height and her header-technique). Not sure if anyone can mention other examples, but in that tournament Japan was really looking like a "total football" team alike men's Netherlands in the '70s, where basically every player could take any role on the pitch.

This is very interesting: would you care to post a link to that YouTube video?