This is Shibata Satomi, 170cm tall so they need her in defence. Was very poor in trying to defend the Yokoyama goal against Belle last week.
From the Pitchside Report site, this is Saki Kumagai vs Alexandra Popp, in last week's Wolsfburg-Frankfurt match: Let's hope that Saki can be happier of herself in the next weeks! Keep fighting, Saki and don't get depressed: you're great!
She wasn't on the bench last week either, so I went back to have a look at the Niigata game, she was subbed out with ten minutes remaining and she looked a little injured. Hard to see properly though.
Just felt like watching it again this morning. Videos are great but sometimes still images are more powerful and moving... I've seen this too many times but it's still hard for any other movies to beat this one. Superb music. I don't think I can wait for another 2.5 years.
There's some miserable weather down in Okayama for you. The forecast is for it to be dry next Friday, but we'll wait to see. I fixed up my big poster this evening, the dog is booked into the hotel and I need now to book a hotel for the two of us plus the three-day rail pass. Busy busy.
I found this on an Okayama football fan's blog. None of this fancy printing nonsense for the Takahashi girls, just some scrap paper and crayons will do.
Four Sayama players in the picture and not one is even close to challenging Muramatsu for the ball. Hopefully the highlights will be uploaded tomorrow.
Hey people: Giraffe has uploaded a beautiful 4 parter special about Mobcast Cup (with a sub-special about Ami Otaki) I guess that the interviews to OL players (Thomis, Schelin, Abily, Bompastor) and coach confirm that OL will play with its best starters. In a part of the special, Kei Matsubara (who went in France to make it) plays a mini-training match with some OL players (not the main team, I guess a young team) and she's exhausted after it! I'll have to ask Virany what kind of Lyon's specialties are offered to Asano Nagasato and Takase: I didn't recognize them (for Canberra United, instead, they had offered them an easy-to-recognize Aussie hamburger! ). Takase seemed to find that what she was eating was similar to some Japanese dish...
In the big game today the JSCL make no changes, but Norddea have gone for drastic action in the hope of pulling back the three goal deficit, bringing in Miyoshi Nana, Takahashi Rina, Nishino Nanaka and Kikuchi Ayuka to replace Ebiko Mio, Suzuki Wako, Takahashi Rina and Chou Shiyon.
In the latest Giraffe uploads for the Mobcast cup there is a shot of the NT with Noda and Sawa. Was there a NT with Honda, Noda, and Sawa?
No, unless Honda came back after 1991 for some informal friendly or something. I've been looking at the lineups for all games between 1981 and 2008, highly entertaining.
Looks like it's half-time and the game is up for Norddea, with the JSCL 1-0 up, and no prizes for guessing who scored.
Well that's that over with, Toriumi Mai getting the only goal to give JSCL a 4-0 aggregate win over Norddea. Just Friday's game to go to finalise next year's exciting Challenge League. At least Bunnys can say they started the season on top. Bunnys Kyoto Cerezo Osaka Ehime FC Fukuoka J. Anclas Hoyo Sukarabu FC Je Vrille Kagoshima JFA Academy JSCL Nittaidai Nojima Stella Kanagawa Parceiro Nagano Sfida Setagaya Shimizudaihachi Pleiades Shizuoka Sangyo University Iwata Bonita Tokiwagi Gakuen with either FC Takahashi or AS Elfen Sayama to join them.
Lol, at least in alphabetical order, no-one can beat them!!! (Unless in 2014 season some new team decides to choose the letter A, just for the sake to beat them there... ) So, basically, JSCL is a club revolving around Mai Toriumi. What if one day she decides that she deserves a better team? In other words, this season JCSL and Nagano Parceiro got to avoid relegation, because of the increased number of teams and play-off, but, given their records this season, what chances they have to make the trick next season too? Unless some newly-promoted team is even weaker than them (but I have doubts, because they underwent a severe qualification-process, and we already saw that clubs like Nojima Stella Kanagawa, for instance, look like they belong to the upper part of the rankings), I can't really see how these 2 clubs can hope to survive (unless they count on Buunys to play a sort of "2-out-of-3-will-die" mini-tournament). But I guess an_turtar, at least for the next week, will be way far from this kinds of speculations and concentrated on just one match...
Toriumi Mai is now 21, so this may be her last year in college. The JSC is run in co-operation with Albirex Niigata, so maybe she could join them, I'm sure she could get onto another Challenge League team certainly. 11 goals in the last 11 games for the bottom team in the league, that's not too bad. I think Hoyo Sukarabu could do pretty poorly next year. Bunnys are obvious relegation candidates again, but we'll just have to wait to see towards the end of the school and university year to see who moves where. Tokiwagi look ok, they have some good first year girls I've seen, the JFA will be ok, the other university teams will be as strong as ever. Other players might take the lead of Nakada Maiko and go back to college to get training qualifications and so on. I'm trying to focus on the game on Friday, but we have eight other massive games to look at. The JSCL are back in action against the Seiwa girls of Sendai, and the winner gets to play Sayama in Vegalta Sendai's home stadium before Vegalta's own game against either Nittaidai or my Ehime girls. The JFA girls are back in action against the Shizuoka students in the second all-Challenge League tie, Fukui High School are up against the mighty Waseda University, while Nojima are up against Melsa Kumamoto. Himeji Dokkyo University play Kamimura Gakuen High School with the winner taking on FC Takahashi in Sendai on Saturday, and that Takahashi game is followed by Tokiwagi against the winner of Fujieda Junshin/Niigata University of Health and Welfare. Finally, Kanto Gakuen University play Okayama Sakuyou High School for the right to play Anclas. I've been checking what happened to the other Challenge League clubs. Bunnys Kyoto: Lost 2-1 to Hinomoto Cerezo Osaka: Don't appear to have entered Hoyo Sukarabu: FC Lost to Vicsale Okinawa on penalties following a 2-2 draw Je Vrille Kagoshima: Don't appear to have entered Parceiro Nagano: Withdrew Sfida Setagaya: Lost 2-0 to Kanto Gakuen University Shimizudaihachi Pleiades: Beaten 2-1 after extra time by Tokoha Tachibana High School By the way, here's a nice picture from the game yesterday.
Today's news: AFC has also announced the top three nominees for the 2012 AFC Women’s Player of the year accolade. NOMINEES FOR AFC WOMEN’S PLAYER OF THE YEAR 2012 (in alphabetical order) Aya Miyama (Japan) Homare Sawa (Japan) Yuki Ogimi (Japan) The awards will be presented at the AFC Annual Awards gala to be held at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur on November 29, 2012.
Ok, so this blogger guy managed to upload footage of the Takahashi goal on Saturday, we're still waiting for the Okayama news footage to be uploaded, it probably hasn't been on television yet though.
Well, unsurprisingly, it looks like Japan is sweeping all the podium in the last years' AFC Player of the Year. I am not sure about who should win of these three, but putting Ogimi in top 3 somehow corrects a mistake I guess they made in FIFA POTY's short list, where Yuki should have been represented also...
Last year Sawa didn't go/attend to these awards... So Miyama got it XD. BET on something similar to happen XD
Rumi news by Kyra: http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=wusc_OTeNVU&desktop_uri=/watch?v=wusc_OTeNVU&gl=DE Rumi played a full game vs Vendenheim and did good as defender but could still improve. She still has some issues with her injury. She is back since September and she still plays number 7. She so far has played two full games, two games for about 70 minutes, and has been a sub before.
In fact lately we have missed Kyra and his updates about MHSC. did he left us for good? Anyway, let's hope that Rumi recovers better and better each day: it's great that she's playing!
Cute story in the Sanyo Shimbun about the Sakuyo goalkeeper - following in her mother's and her grandmother's footsteps by playing in the cup thirty years after they had played together for Hiroshima Taiga. Sakuyo play Kanto Gakuen University on Saturday, with the winner playing Anclas.