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

This result doesn't change much in Division 1, except that Albirex now joins JEF at 18 points (but with a slightly better goal difference) as a chaser or the duo Beleza/Urawa. As much as JEF, though, Albi seems to me like the good club that can never realistically have a shot at winning the whole league.

Anyway, Megumi Kamionobe remains a great player!

As expected, Orca manage to win their game and now lead Division 2. The rankings read: Orca 23, Ehime 22, Saitama 21, Cerezo 19, Sfida 18; very interesting, to say the least!

Yesterday, in my anticipation for today's matches I had actually mixed up an East Divison team with a West Division one. Anyway, today was the revenge of the West Division teams: Ange Violet Hiroshima didn't lose and Cerezo Girl even posted a resounding win!

Tokiwagi and Kibi seem doomed in the 9~12 group, since the other two teams are way stronger, at least on paper. The only real question is who'll end at the bottom. Kibi had a worse record in the regular season, but Tokiwagi stumbled very badly today: I guess the direct clash at the last match-day will give us the answer...

 

Two Sasakis score the winning goals for their respective teams today: Miwa Sasaki for Stella (it's her first of the season) and Mayu Sasaki for Urawa (her second).

A good day for Nojima Stella: they won by coming back from behind, for a change, instead of wasting an advantage like they did in some of the previous weeks and Arisa Minamino finally come back to scoring in the league (it's her 4th goal only in Nadeshiko League this season, although she had scored 5 other goals in Nadeshiko League Cup; she didn't score since 7th of July, anyway).
From the scoresheet, it looks like there was a PK during the game, but I didn't get if it was scored or not.

With this away win, Urawa Red Diamonds took the lead in the rankings, at the moment, while waiting for Beleza's game tomorrow, that could be a tricky one, since it's an away match in Chiba: I wonder if "the Green Machine" can happen to stumble in any way.
In the same fashion, Yuika Sugasawa took the lead of the scorers' rankings over Mina Tanaka: we're going to see if Beleza's match will change anything here also.

In Division 2 too there was, at least temporarily, a double-change at the top of the two charts: Rie Azami took the lead of the top-scorers rankings over Saori Takarada (who didn't score today!), while Ehime FC Ladies climbed back at the top of the league.

What an exciting game Ehime-Cerezo had to be! It was a "must-win" match for both teams, since losing it would have left them behind while giving an advantage to a direct rival for promotion: Cerezo Ladies went ahead for three consecutive times, only for Ehime to equalize everytime (the last time at 86') and to finally win at 90'+4'!!!
Ehime had the power of former Senior NT members Ayumi Oya and Mami Ueno. Cerezo, since Takarada, as I had mentioned, didn't score, had an unusual brace by Reina Wakisaka, who (if I remember well from U-17 WWC 2016) should be a Central DF!

No East Division dominance, this time, but it's mainly because all of the matches were inter-division!

Interestingly, in the 5~8 Group, both games had the same development: from 2-0, to 2-2, to 3-2! For Belle, good old Kiryu scored and Adachi furtherly consolidated her lead in the top-scorer rankings.

But the real surprise is at the bottom! Both Tokiwagi and Kibi, who looked hopeless last week, won their respective games: so the situation, ahead of the last match-day of these play-offs is: everyone at 3 points, with very close goal differences (1, 1, 0, -2)! Now literally anything could happen!

 

This week, Vegalta Sendai Ladies subbed-in American Jordan Marada at 78', but this time she didn't scored (Nojima scored the winner three minutes later instead). Apparently, they just signed another player from overseas, though: at 84', they also put in Millene Cabral Vieira; her name and the fact that she was born in Porto Alegre suggest that she's Brazilian, although she also played in the USA, at Martin Methodist College.

 

Wow, this would leave Nadeshiko League's destiny temporarily... out in the air (sorry for the pun).

 

So the JEF-Beleza game has been in fact postponed. Any idea about when it will be re-scheduled?

It can be a key-game for the whole season, and JEF should be incredibly motivated to win it: by doing that, they would catch up with Beleza at 2nd place and they could be considered in contention for the title "for real" this time.

By the way, I don't remember if it was ever mentioned here that Erina Yamane, apparently, ended her stint with Real Betis in Spain and got back to JEF. She didn't play last week and wasn't even on the bench, but she's now part of JEF's roster again with #27.
Nadeshiko League's website recently uploaded on YouTube a long video-interview with her and captain Saki Ueno: I suppose she probably says something about the subject there, although I don't know Japanese well enough to actually understand anything.

Everything as expected in Division 2, since the three bottom-teams of the league all lose their respective home games and Orca Kamagawa, this way, keep the top-position in the rankings. Only real change is that AS Harima Albion catch up with Nippatsu's goal difference and go ahead of them in the rankings for higher number of goals scored.

Funny thing that, in the Yamato-Harima match, one Nakano per team scored (Hikari for Sylphid, Rino for Albion). Much more importantly, Fumina Katsurama scores again and lifts herself at third place of the top-scorers' rankings, level with Ayumi Oya (who had scored a brace yesterday).

FC Jumonji Ventus patiently wait until 87' to place the winning blow: now they're in pole position for promotion, since a draw in Nagoya next week would be enough for them to top the group.

 

Usual batch of international updates:

NWSL:

- Chicago Red Stars-Houston Dash 3-0. Yuki Nagasato had both excellent things and bad things in this game: she assisted Sam Kerr for her second goal of the match, showcasing once again the power of the Nagasato-Kerr connection, and she now leads alone NWSL's assist-rankings with 6! (While her partner in crime Sam Kerr is dominating top-scorers' rankings with 15). On the other hand, in the last part of the game Yuki missed a PK and took her third Yellow Card of the season!
Chicaco Red Stars, with this win, went ahead of two other teams, reaching 3rd place; on the other hand, these same two teams have a game in hand to Chicago, so the fight for play-off is very open.
Highlights: http://www.nwslsoccer.com/videos/1F47F4CE-7E01-FCA0-39C9-13833C18B8FE

- Sky Blue FC-North Carolina Courage 1-2. As usual, Nahomi Kawasumi was a late sub, at 69'. Sky Blue remains 8th out of 9 teams in NWSL.
Highlights: http://www.nwslsoccer.com/videos/57FDF808-1320-DA7A-DB4F-0DCB6F9A4A24

- Seattle Reign FC-Orlando Pride 3-1. Since all of the contenders for play-offs also won, Seattle remain at 5th place, but with a game in hand to Chicago, that are 2 points ahead of them. The big news is that Rumi Utsugi, although not appearing in the line-up nor on the bench, is no more listed as injured! I suppose she's now probably training alone to recover, but maybe we could see her back on the pitch before the end of the season. I'll try to know more about that in the next days.
Highlights: http://www.nwslsoccer.com/videos/4F47F85C-C198-7D47-F037-0F9140028F5D


Division 1 Féminine:

- Reims-OL 3-8. Yes, you did read well: 3 goals to 8! OL tend to post this kind of unusual scores. For records it was ten years (TEN YEARS!!! ) that a team wasn't scoring 3 goals to OL in French league (back then, at least, it was a win for that team, and not a 3-8 loss ). I am afraid that the tendency we had seen in the last part of 2018-2019 season and in the first games of the current one is confirmed: in the star-studded world of OL, our Saki Kumagai has become one of their "deluxe" bench players: this week she was only subbed-in at 81' (although she was in time for starting the action of the 8th goal).


Frauen-Bundesliga was in break (I suppose because of the Euro 2021 qualifier games) and it will resume next week-end.


Liga Femenina:

- this week-end the first match-day of the league was played in Spain. Although it doesn't involve Japanese players, it can be interesting to know that Barcelona won by 9-1 (yes, 9 goals to 1, another OL-like score) vs CD Tacón, the newly promoted club that was bought by Real Madrid and that was sporting internationals as WWC-3rd-placed Kosovare Asllani and Sofia Jakobsson.
Anyway, here we're of course interested in Yoko Tanaka (after Erina Yamane came back to Japan, I am not sure how many other Japanese players there are in 1st Division and I didn't have the time to check; @KAPIJXM, can you somehow examine the question for us?): Sporting Huelva lost their first home game by 0-1, but it can be anyway considered an encouraging result, because it was vs reigning champions of Atletico Madrid and the game was kept tied for long. Yoko Tanaka started and was subbed-out at 75'; three minutes later, Atletico Madrid scores.
No highlights of the game at the moment, as far as I know: does anyone know what's Spanish league video-coverage?


Austrian Frauen-Liga:

- I had missed the beginning of the league in Austria: they're already at the 3rd matchday, that was played on Saturday. The news are not so good for Japanese fans, although there is a little ray of light. I'll begin with a question: there was no trace of Shiho Tomari or Marin Fujisawa in FC Wacker Innsbruck's line-up in these first three match-days; does anyone know if they came back to Japan? Or maybe if they were signed by another team in Austria or elsewhere overseas? Anyway, these season Wacker Innsbruck has two different Japanese players in their line-up: Saya Kawasaki (and we had read the news about her travel to Austria) and Kanako Fuse (I wasn't aware of her instead and I can't even remember which team she comes from: @unepommekun?). Well, I am afraid that Innsbruck is quite weaker compared to the last season: they lost all of the first three games of the league, the first two by 2-0 and the last one, on Saturday, by 6-1!!! So, where's the "ray of light" you promised, you could say? Well, not only our Japanese players were always starters in these three games, but Saya Kawasaki actually scored what's the only goal scored by the team so far. By the way, as you can see from the scoresheet, Kawasaki's goal actually was the first of the game, at 38': at that point, the team was probably hoping for a good result, but later, in 2nd half, they were bludgeoned by 6-1.
I am not sure if there are youtube videos available, but given the poor covering of this league, I guess not.

 

And for all of Yoko Tanaka's fans out there... Highlights of Sporting Huelva-Atletico Madrid (although Tanayo can basically only be seen at the beginning of the match and not even much clearly; this footage is quite chaotic and often ruined by the shadows, but, hey, it's way better than nothing!):

Thank you very much, @KAPIJXM: Noguchi had totally flown under my radar!

 

...And very long and detailed highlights of OL's game, with multiple-angles replays for each goal. In the latest year, Kumagai had often been the first-choice PK-taker for OL, but she wasn't on the pitch yet, when Majri scored hers.

In the action of the last goal, you can anyway see how Saki first-touch opens the play on the Right-Side for Majri, whose cross is converted to goal by Hegerberg.

 

Oh, for records RCD Espanyol have lost their first game of the season, an away one vs Deportivo Abanca, by 3-1.Ayaka Noguchi started on the bench, but she was subbed in at 56', when the score was 1-0 against her team.

 

Mystery (partially) solved. I apologize in advance for any info @unepommekun could have previously posted that I had completely forgot about, but I've got the feeling that we weren't aware of most of the things I am going to list here.

First point: it's confirmed that Wacker Innsbruck has waived Tomari and Fujisawa at the end of last season (only to replace them later with two other Japanese players: apparently they decided that they can't live without two Japanese in the team). This article from a Tiroler newspaper, that was written in mid-August, claims that the two Japanese player will leave the club (it's written in German, but in this case Google-translator is quite clear at least for this particular point). If I understand well, the club is in a financial crisis because of the relagation of the men's team, so the women's team had to change many players also and is only aiming at avoiding the relegation (doesn't look easy, from these first matchdays).

I had to look for her Wikipedia in German (the English one wasn't updated) but I discovered that Shiho Tomari ended up playing for BV Cloppenburg, in German 2nd Division. The big surprise (at least for me) is that, when I went on the roster-page of their website I found that former Urawa's Midfielder Natsuki Kishikawa is playing in the same club! Shiho Tomari, by the way, is listed as a Defender.
Frauen-Bundesliga 2nd Division already played 3 matchdays and Tomari & Kishikawa were starters in all of them: the team has a bizarre affinity for 3-3 draws (their first two games, vs TSG Hoffenheim 2nd team and FSV Gütersloh 2009 ended with this score) but in their third game they somehow "forgot" to score theirs and the game ended 3-0 for their opponent, 1.FC Saarbrücken. So the team is now in 11th position out of 14 teams with 2 points.
Natsuki Kishikawa scored one of the goals in the first matchday vs Hoffenheim.

When I say that the mystery was just partially solved, I meant that I found no news about Marin Fujisawa instead. Her Wikipedia in Japanese wasn't updated, since it's still at her 2018 stint in Innsbruck, and I didn't find any other reliable source.

 

Yes, she is listed as Maya, but apparently she wasn't on the pitch nor on the bench either in this week-end.



There are probably quite a lot of other Japanese players in Spanish 2nd Division, but since it's formed by 7 regional groups, it's quite difficult to track them all down!

For instance, I found that Michi Goto, that had reached third place in her regional league with SD Eibar last season, doesn't play anymore with that club, that anyway sports two Japanese players, Honoka Yonei and Tomo Matsukawa, who was playing last season for relegated Fundación Albacete:



No idea if Goto has been signed by another club in Spain or not.

Albacete, now playing in IV Group of 2nd Division, left Matsukawa but retained Hitomi Tanaka.

I am quite sure there must be other Japanese players scattered around Spain, but it's very difficult to have a complete list of them. I guess the only way would be to patiently comb through all of the rosters of the 16 clubs in 1st Division and of the 14 (clubs per league) x 7 (regional leagues) = 98 clubs in 2nd Division! Something frankly I don't have the time to do right now.