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

Yes, let's keep it in Tokyo, now: it's not worth having it travel to France just for it to return back in Japan!

 

I am sorry for Nojima, but I was predicting JEF bouncing back after the loss vs Beleza three days ago: they are a good team and they probably wanted to make a statement that they're not going to be last in Nadeshiko League, no matter if after just two games.

Both the big ones, Beleza and INAC having to settle with a draw! Maybe the biggest surprise is newly-promoted Iga stopping the "green machine" (well, they're some sort of "green machine" too, after all! ).

Maybe it's Urawa's years? Mizutani, with 3 goals in just 4 days, looks like it was a very good signing for them. She came last season from Tsukuba FC, didn't she? Ok, Nittaidai look like they will be at the bottom this season also (especially after giving away their top players, as Risako Oga to Nojima and Shoko Uemura to Urawa), but Red Diamonds' win is anyway impressive.

Cerezo Ladies bouncing back too from Tuesday's loss, and Takarada being Takarada.

Rie Azami has always been an impressive player: she could have been considered for NT, if she hadn't chosen to have her career at Saitama only, no matter how often they were going to play in 2nd Division...

Orca is the only team who had 2 wins in 2 match-day, but the situation in Division 2 looks as fuzzy as it's always been in the latest season: very balanced tournament and I couldn't say if there is a team who can actually run away with promotion, now that Nippatsu has lost a game too. I would have said Cerezo was going to do the same as Iga last year, but they stumbled at the first match. We're going to see what happens.

Meanwhile, I'll have a personal celebration for Fumina Katsurama's brace. Wheeeeeeeee!

 

Well, for sure Takakura did well not to call her for SheBelieves nor for the next cycle of friendlies either.

I wonder if having her play for the Empress' Cup wasn't a little rushed. Let's hope she can fully recover in the next weeks, but of course, if she doesn't manage to get back on the pitch soon, this could cast a big shadow on her WWC chances...

 

I am trying to piece together all of the rosters of Nadeshiko Legue 2 teams for season 2019. Unluckily, some of them (Bunnys, Cerezo, maybe Shizuoka also, although I should better check this one) didn't update their website yet since 2018.
I re-discovered some tranfers that I had forgot (or almost forgot) about: for instance, Orca Kamogawa now at first place in Division 2 makes more sense if you remember that Yukari Kinga now plays there!

I double-checked the info @unepommekun had posted at the beginning of this thread (and at the end of the 2018 one) and it seems to me that he had nailed all the tranfers. The only one missing was this one:

It looks like her destination was AS Harima Albion.

 

By the way, talking about Kinga: look at this pic from her instagram. Yukari Kinga along with the two holy cows of Nadeshiko football (one of them holding a child that I am sure will be a future Nadeshiko star ):

https://www.instagram.com/p/Btxtj9qAY4H/

 

A long-due batch of international updates:

- NWSL is going to start on Saturday the 13th of April. Rumi Utsugi remained with Seattle Reign FC and Yuki Ogimi is back at Chicago Red Stars after her stint in Australia, while Nahomi Kawsumi joined Sky Blue FC: let's hope the situation in this club is at least a little better than it was at the end of last season.


- Frauen-Bundesliga: both teams with Japanese players in their rosters have lost: Freiburg away to Hoffenheim by 1-2 yesterday (for a change, Hikaru Naomoto played 80', instead of being subbed-in at 80'; but she didn't score and she couldn't avoid a loss for her team); Freiburg now stand in 6th position. Borussia Mönchengladbach lost today to Wolfsburg by 0-8; Keiko Kodama wasn't on the pitch nor on the bench: I hope she isn't injured again (although everything is possible: this team looks all over the place and frankly the situation seems quite embarassing for the credit of the whole Frauen-Bundesliga; 15 loss and a draw out of 16 matches and goal difference of 7 to 82 ).


- Division 1 Féminine: the league had a break (so the situation is always the same: OL leads and PSG is chasing 2 points behind) because OL and PSG were busy with UEFA Women's Champions' League quarter-finals. OL played vs Wolsfburg in Lyon on Wednedsay and they won by 2-1; the margin is minimal, but they are ahead anyway so they could make it in the 2nd leg. Saki Kumagai played the whole game as a Midfielder in a 4-3-3 formation.
Highlights on the match:




- Liga Femenina is quite popular these days (Atletico Madrid-Barcelona recently broke the all-time record attendance for a women's football game): today Real Betis had a 0-0 away draw vs Rayo Vallecano (meh!); Erina Yamane wasn't on the pitch: maybe she was given a break after SheBelieves Cup, where she played all of the matches? Anyway her team now keeps a good 4th place in the rankings.
Albacete lost an home match by 0-1 to Real Sociedad and now they're third-to-alast in the rankings . Apparently Hitomi Tanaka was back from her injury, but now it's Tomi Matsukawa who's out (probably injured) since two match-days.
A quick pass to the other players I know of in the league: Ayaki Shinada was on the bench for Espanyol in an 1-2 away win in Bilbao.
In Group 2 of "Segunda Division" (2nd Division), Michi Goto's SD Eibar is now at second place, after a 0-4 away win vs Mulier FCN. Not sure how many teams are promoted to 1st Division, anyway Eibar is 4 points behind the leaders of Alaves. Beyond Michi Goto, another Japanese players is in the team, Honoka Yonei.


- Frauenliga in Austria: FC Wacker Innsbruck won today an away game vs Union Kleinmünchen by 0-3. Both Shiho Tomari and Marin Fujisawa were on the pitch and Tomari scored the first goal for her team. Wacker Innsbruck are anyway sadly sitting in 6th position out of 10 teams. I couldn't find any video-highlights of the match, nor I could find any top-scorer rankings of Austrian League to get a rough idea of how Tomari is doing there. It's not easy for me to find info in German (if any German-native-speaker can help, he will be welcome), but anyway I've got the feeling that women's football is very badly covered by media in Austria. Maybe, considering that Innsbruck in the end is not so far from Milano, one day I could personally go checking the situation .


- South Korean WK-League should start on 15th of April. Frankly I lost count of how many Japanese players are set to play there: Nagano and Minamiyama recently got back in Japan; Asuna Tanaka should have remained there instead; I remember how @unepommekun had covered a batch of player trasferring to Korea at the beginning of the year, including most notably Mayu Ikejiri. Can anyone make a list of how many Japanese players should be there and in which teams? So, despite the language barrier to Korean, we could try to follow them from time to time, when the league will start.


Did I forget any overseas league with Japanese players in it? Australian League ended in February and won't start again until next Autumn. Chinese Women's Super League could have some Japanese players in it (it had some in the past, most notably Kinga), but It's quite difficult to gather info about it and I don't know of any Japanese player at the moment (by the way, I am not sure if the league already started of if it's going to start soon).
Please let me know if you are aware of any other Japanese player overseas.

 

Sorry I though it was a common idiom to refer to some kind of "idol" in a particular environment and that the "cow" part wasn't felt as literal in it. Was trying to traslate an Italian idiom, "mostro sacro" (="holy moster", where the "moster" part is no more felt as negative), but I should know better than trying to traslate things from my native language: I should only use idioms that I well know in English, inside sentences that I've directly thought in English.

 

Sorry for repeating this info in my post, but I was piecing it together while you were posting yours.