Fair enough! I can not fault your reasoning. Now it is you and Blissett against me. I still think it was a dive though. I genuinely find it interesting the way people see things and interpret the game differently. It shows how hard it must be to referee football.
Yesterday's result: Jef 0-1 Omiya (Sakai) Nagano (Murakami) 1-2 Albi (Ishibuchi, Nagasawa) Nojima (Ishida Minami) 1-5 Urawa (OG, Sugasawa 2, Shiokoshi 2)
I can certainly see where you are coming from. In the men's game it's a typical situation that continues with theatricals and vocal demands to the ref to call a foul. The usually relaxed way it's handled in the women's game like in this case is one of the big parts that draws me to it.
I'd super-rep you if I could: for me too, this is one of the main reasons I follow women's football in general and Nadeshiko football in particular (let's say, for instance, that Italian women's league is of course much better than Italian men's league, but it's anyway more, let's say "theatrical" than Nadeshiko League. And I am not necessarily talking about dives. Oh, well, we're Italian: it's a stereotype, but it also has its part of truth ).
Tomorrow, three matches involving Japanese players will take place in Serie A Femminile: - at 12:30 CET, Napoli-San Marino Academy. For San Marino, it will be a key-match to remain in 1st Division: they're now level with Napoli but with a worse goal difference. Napoli have done much better than San Marino in the last month, to the point that they've managed to catch up with them, while coming from behind, and now they threaten to go ahead with a win. Meanwhile, two San Marino's key-players are out with an ACL since last week! Quite difficult test for Shiho Kunisawa and for her team, but she's highly regarded as one of the players who could keep San Marino's hopes alive. A recent article on an Italian website claims that Kunisawa's cousin is a famous sumo champion: I didn't know that! - at 15:00 Roma-Milan (that I hope will be streamed as usual on Milan AC's Dailymotion channel): the match won't have much to say as much as Serie A's rankings are involved, since both teams' placements are by now quite set in stone, with just 4 match-days to go: Milan are 2nd-placed, 6 points behind Juventus and with a 8 points advantage over Sassuolo; Roma are 4th-placed, 6 points behind Sassuolo and with a 7 points advantage over Empoli. The real interest of this game is that it's the anticipation of the Coppa Italia final that will be played on the 30th of May in Reggio Emilia (in the same stadium where I saw Saki Kumagai win one of her countless Champions' Leagues with OL : how I wish I could go there to watch Yui Hasegawa too! ). It will be interesting to see if the teams will try to keep their cards close to their chest in this league match or if they'll anyway choose an open approach and try to win no matter what. - at 15:00, Hellas Verona-Sassuolo; Sassuolo don't have much more to ask to this season: their 3rd place is quite safe, but to try to catch up with Milan at 2nd-place (thus qualifying to the Champions' League) they have to hope that Milan gain less than 4 points in the next 4 matches (while so far Milan have won all of their games in the league, except the ones vs Juventus). Mana Mihashi's team will have the advantage of the direct clash at home vs Milan on 16th of May, but it will be a difficult task anyway, and they'll surely have to win all of their remaining matches to hold any chance, including the one from tomorrow (shouldn't be the most difficult one, anyway, since Verona mathematically avoided relegation with their win from two weeks ago). Stay tuned for the outcome of this Japanese-Italian connection tomorrow, on this thread!
Rare chance to watch Honoka Hayashi live this weekend (well not really that rare as Damallsvenskan matches are streamed in pay per view on Swedish TV) Djurgardens derby with AIK will be free to watch on Wnited (only email registration is required). Match is scheduled for Sunday 2nd May 15:00 (local time). Again Mana Iwabuchi made a goal happen almost single handedly. She officialy played box-to-box CM against Birmingham (as opposed to unofficialy playing this position anyway in last matches while she was running back all the time from FW in order to see any ball at all). A first-ever professional goal for @FreyaGregory11 comes in the #SecondCityDerby! 🤩pic.twitter.com/nvGe1ZxnEw— Aston Villa Women (@AVWFCOfficial) April 28, 2021 Aston Villa players are pretty much clueless tactically. Only when Iwabuchi was taking on three opponents by herself thus creating empty space - her teammates were able to make an attacking action that wasn't a hopeful long ball into pk box. She was sub-off in 85th min. Brimingham scored in 96th min from typical FK hopeful ball send into the mix. They hadn't had any other chance in this match. Aston Villa vs. West Ham Sunday 2nd May 11:30 on FA Player (email reg req) Ichi ka bachi ka.
I wasn't aware Japanese sumo supporters were so undisciplined: or throwing the pillows is a common form of celebrations?
Today's result: Nadeshiko League Nittaidai (Sekiguchi, Matsunaga) 2-1 Nagoya (Takebayashi) Ange Violet (Matsuda Haruna) 1-1 Cerezo (Koyama) Setagaya (Nagasaki) 1-0 Orca Nadeshiko League 2 JFA 0-2 Shizuoka (Koizumi, Fujiwara)
While we wait for Roma-Milan this afternoon, a priceless video-Tweet! Hasegawa's team-mates are having fun at confusing her: instead of teaching Italian to her (or along with doing that), they keep teaching her local vernaculars. Some weeks ago, Giacinti, in an interview, had told how she was teaching the dialect from Bergamo to Yui. Now, Deborah Salvatori-Rinaldi and Linda Tucceri-Cimini, who are both from the central region of Abruzzo, hold an hilarious lesson for Yui, including gestural language! For records, I am Italian, but, being from the North of Italy, I can't tell you at all what kind of phrase they're teaching to Yui! I don't understand a word either. STANNO INSEGNANDO L'ABRUZZESE A YUI HASEGAWA, VOLO 🤣🤣🤣🤣 #followtherossonere #Milanfemminile #yuihasegawa #abruzzo pic.twitter.com/DfeWMm8mtX— Maria Antonietta 🍩 (@ciambella86) April 30, 2021
Tomorrow's games: Nadeshiko League (all games start at 13:00) Nippatsu vs Ehime Yamato vs Konomiya Harima vs Iga Nadeshiko League 2 Bunnys vs Kibi 11:00 Belle vs NORD 11:00 Anclas vs Tsukuba 13:00
Roma-Milan streaming link, kick-off at 15:00: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7cd3of Difficult match, Milan could easily lose it.
22' Hasegawa just missed a sitter. 32' Hasegawa backheels the ball for Bouqete - her shot struck the crossbar Milan's getting advantage in closing minutes of 1st half but good game none the less. 0-0 HT
Real Madrid - Sporting de Huelva will be broadcast tomorrow at 12:00 CET on RealMadridTV and Twitch. I don't know if it will be geoblocked, in that case maybe we can find other links.
The 0-0 score stayed until the end of the match, but it was anyway an entertaining match and Yui Hasegawa played it well (despite missing that goal in 1st Half). Sassuolo got closer to Milan in the rankings, now 6 points behind, but I am confident that Milan should be able to keep their advantage, even should they lose the direct clash, scheduled two weeks from now. Talking about Sassuolo, Mana Mihashi's team comfortably won their away match in Verona by 0-4, with a brace scored by their Maltese baby-talent (she'll turn 17 on the 5th of May) Haley Bugeja, thus keeping their hopes alive to catch up with Milan. Bad news from San Marino, instead. Not only San Marino lost 5-0 to Napoli, thus facing relegation barring a miracle in the last three games, but Shino Kunisawa got an injury in the warm-up of the game so she didn't even start! San Marino Academy managed to at least keep it close until 70', when they were down by just 1-0, but then they collapsed. I'll make sure to post highlights og the games when available.
H.T.....Nippatsu 2 Ehime 0 Hard to see Ehime getting anything from this game as they have only managed one off target shot on goal and Nippatsu missed a sitter at 43 mins and should be 3 goals to the good.
72 min.....Nippatsu 3 Ehime 0 F.T.....Nippatsu 3 Ehime 0 Another difficult weeks viewing for fans of Ehime Ladies F.C.The problem is having watched their team concede goals it's getting harder and harder to see where their own goals are going to come from and if they continue to lose the ball as easily as they do in their own half things are not going to improve.
No luck so far with Napoli-San Marino highlights, but I guess, in a Nadeshiko perspective, this match is less important to see, since it was just a bad loss and actually there wasn't even a Japanese player on the pitch, since Kunisawa got injured in the warm-up. Verona-Sassuolo: Roma-Milan:
Today's result: Nadeshiko League Nippatsu (Katayama, Hirakawa, Takamura) 3-0 Ehime Yamato 0-3 Konomiya (Oguma, Asano, Morisako) Harima 0-2 Iga (Suzuki, Sugita) Nadeshiko League 2 Bunnys (Kaneshige 3, Sato, Maekawa) 5-2 Kibi (Nishimura 2) Belle (Shimizu) 1-2 NORD (Miura, Ohya) Anclas (Kato 2,Yanagita) 3-1 Tsukuba (Furutera)
Stockholm derby for Hayashi! Djurgardens 1 - 2 AIK Honoka Hayashi 57' 79'(pen.) Dunno it she was awarded MVP but she was one of the best players on the pitch - working hard both in attack and defense. After 3 rounds AIK moves to 4th place in table. Kvittering av Honoka Hayashi för @aikfotboll mot @DIF_Fotboll pic.twitter.com/IWcoISRNy9— Sportbladet (@sportbladet) May 2, 2021 SEGER! AIK vänder matchen och vinner med 2-1 mot Djurgårdens IF. Stor matchvinnare: Honoka Hayashi! pic.twitter.com/j2C0trQgZg— AIK Fotboll Dam (@AIKFotbollDam) May 2, 2021 FA WSL relegation battle Aston Villa 0 - 0 West Ham Iwabuchi was carded in 60th min and was subbed off in 79th min. Bristol 0-1 Man Utd. Villians are now 2 points clear from Bristol Last round. Bristol must win in Brighton (slim chance) in order for Villa to be relegated. Aston Villa play with Arsenal - a game they can't win.