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

Wow, they have a World Champion coach! (Although, if I remember well, Yano was the only field player in 2011 WWC's roster who actually didn't see the pitch)

 

Sara Imada is Sunday's scorer for Teikyo University vs Iga, isn't she?

Also, Mitsuki Horie has been a super-scorer for Shizuoka, both in Challenge League and in Division 2: I expect she can translate that into Universiade NT.

 

Was this award invented from scratch to give Ikeda some recognition?

 

Japan NT can be out of U-17 WWC, but it today's Spain-New Zealand semi-final there is some Japan: a completely Japanese referee team of Yoshimi Yamashita (central referee), Naomi Teshirogi and Makoto Bozono. I guess it's very good that our women referees get international experience.

The game is currently 0-0 at 35' and NZ hit the crossbar a few minutes ago: a quite open game under an annoying rain.
the link is here, if anyone wants to watch: http://www.sportingvideo.com/20181128/vv5bfdc115672014.52259749-2097685.html

Edit: now 1-0 for Spain at 39': the Eva Navarro-Claudia Pina connection had already threatened to be lethal earlier: now it was.

 

On the U-17 WWC website I actually discovered another interesting piece of info: along with Jill Ellis and Hope Powell, Asako Takakura was part of a "FIFA coach mentoring program" that involved Mexico's U-17 Head Coach, Canada's U-17 WWC and New Zealand's U-17 Assistant Coach. This could somehow explain the level of success these teams had so far at Uruguay's World Cup.

According to the article, Takakura was specifically mentoring New Zealand's Assistant Coach Gemma Lewis: maybe she revealed her too much of Japanese particular brand of football and was because of that that Ferns managed to beat us?

 

While Hope Powell couldn't teach absolutely nothing to Canada's coach! Makes sense!

 

Well, I see we're already at 2018 celebrations one month ahead! Makes sense.

I'll try to find the time to watch these videos sometime today.

 

Scorers:
Nojima 3-1 Harima
(13' Shinobu Ohno, 83' Arisa Minamino, 90'+1' Yoko Tanaka - 47' Akane Kuwahara)
Nagano 1-0 Tokiwagi
(36' Wakaho Kanda)
Beleza 4-0 Orca
(22' Rin Sumida, 26' Mina Tanaka, 86' Yuka Momiki, 89' Riko Ueki)
Teikyo 0-1 Jef
(37' Saki Ueno)

Apparently, it wasn't an easy win for JEF: they won with the minimal margin vs this interesting university team who had already eliminated Iga.

 

Will Cerezo Ladies get revenge for the game that basically sealed their relegation?

 

As @And G sometimes had probably noticed (if I remember well), in this charts there is often an annoying tendency to favour powerful middle-range shots (that are indeed spectacular) over equally beautiful well-manoeuvred actions or pieces of technical prowess.
Of course the bad quality of some defenses or of some goalkeeping doesn't help some particular kind of goals to shine.

I tend to like the goals where dribbling abilities of the players are involved, so for instance, in this video, Riko Ueki's one or Rikako Kobayashi's (although this last one could have stretched it a little too much: on the international stage she couldn't probably afford the luxury of dribbling in the box almost the whole defense of a team, as she did vs Nagano).
Yuka Momiki's one (I guess vs Nojima) was probably the one I liked best, both for the perfect through ball from her "twin sister" Hasegawa (that cut away whole Stella's defense from midfield to box) and for the technical ability of Momiki herself, who calmly dribbled the defender and lobbed the goalkeeper.

I now notice that I basically mentioned just Beleza's goals, despite the fact that I don't root particularly for them and that there were a lot of beutiful goals from other teams also (Nojima in particular, with Yoko Yanaka, Ishida...), but I guess that one of the reason why the girls-in-green keep winning titles is because the quality is there indeed.

 

Wow, we scored a lot more than in 2017! Of course we also played more, 20 games instead of 15, but in 2017 we had scored just 23 goals while in 2018 we doubled that count, reaching 46 goals!

It's true that we shored up our stats by putting 7 goals each past poor teams like Ghana or Vietnam, but we also had some quality wins: it can't be a case that we won both the big trophies we were fighting for. Yes, Algarve Cup and Tournament of the Nations were very bad (and most likely costed us the seeding in the upcoming draw for WWC 2019), but we more than made up for that by winning AFC Asian Cup and Asian Games (good omen for WWC: we had won Asian Games ahead of WWC 2011 also ).

Is this your actual selection, or just a mock-up?

I prefer to post them here, if you people don't mind. Yes, the risk is influencing other voters ahead of their own selection, but on the other hand it seems to me that discussing our choices here makes things more interesting!

1st Kumi Yokoyama vs Australia (AFC Cup) 1-0 (the goal that won us the cup, so great thrilling factor; also technically a thing of beauty)
2nd Mana Iwabuchi vs Netherlands (Algarve Cup) 2-6 (I already said that I am a sucker for dribblings, didn't I? That match was disgraceful, but Manadona's goal was a pearl there)
3rd Hasegawa vs Korea DPR (Asian Games) 2-0 (wonderful triangle with Sugasawa in the run and lob in the box)
4th Mana Iwabuchi vs China (AFC Cup) 1-0 (dribbling technique, accuracy, power: all we do like in Mana)
5th Aya Sameshima vs. Ghana (Friendly) 7-1 (you can't ask me to make a top 5 and not mentioning a Shark's goal! I I like too much the moment when she advences to the box head-on and you know something special is going to happen )

There were many goals I would have like to put into this top five (and even most of those that I finally chose were incredibly close in my eyes); they will have to be reduced to honorable mentions: Mizuho Sakaguchi vs Australia at AFC Cup; Moeno Sakaguchi vs USA at ToN; Yuika Sugasawa's diving header that won us Asian Games' final; Iwabuchi's and Momiki's goals vs Norway.

One thing I've learned by re-watching all of these goals is that we have two very good assist-women, whose importance can't be underestimated: Emi Nakajima and Yui Hasegawa!!!