Official 2026 Nadeshiko Japan Thread [R] - なでしこジャパン（英語スレッド）

The race at the top between Kibi and Diavorosso goes on: Hiroshima mostly win by minimal margins, but anyway don't lose track of Kibi!

Yamato Sylphid could have passed SEISA Shonan with an home win today, instead they lose and remain at the one-to-last place, now 5 points behind their closest rival.

Veertien Mie Ladies are back at their 0-0 draws' habit!

 

New cumulative rankings:

1 Unepommekun 4120
2 Lohmann 3715
3 Blissett 3435
4 Miora 2890
5 Elstree 2050
6 Lukephan 1685
7 Quango 1465
8 Frideswide 100

@Lohmann is further away from me by another 100 points.

 

Finally FC Fujizakura Yamanashi started scoring a bit, since some weeks, and lifted me up from the last place!

 

Apparently, it's about a month since WE League's season has finished, with the last match-day of the league having been played on the 16th of May: actually, it took another week for 2025-2026's club season to actually end, with the final of the AFC Women's Champions League on the 23rd of May.
Actually, for what concerns seasonal scorers, I could have ignored that match, since Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza had the questionable idea of not scoring any goal there...

Anyway, it's that time of the year again and actually, despite almost one month having passed, I am being much faster in compiling my "seasonal scorers" chart this year, since in 2025 it had taken one month and a half for me to publish it here.

Of course, as usual, my chart includes all WE League's clubs's competitions: WE League, WE League Cup, Empress' Cup and AFC Women's Champions' League.
These days, most of Nadeshiko Japan's members' goals are scored overseas, but that's not the point of my chart, that only involves WE league's players.

As usual, I'll keep the general rules of the format in a "spoiler" window, since most of you, guys, already know them from previous seasons.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

The chart has no National Teams goals, no overseas leagues goals, only WE League club competitions in Japan (including Empress' Cup, that has clubs from all levels, but no Nadeshiko League Division 1, no Nadeshiko League Division 2 nor any lesser league). So, basically it is: WE League + WE League Cup + Empress' Cup (only counting goals from WE League's clubs) + AFC Women's Champions' League. The season goes from 9th of August of 2025 (beginning of WE League 2025-2026) to 23rd of May of 2025 (final match of the AFC Women's Champions' League).

The format works this way (example):
2 – Riko Yoshida – INAC Kobe Leonessa - 18 (16 / 0 / 2 / 0)(+11!)
This reads as follows: Riko Yoshida is 2nd in the chart, played for INAC Kobe Leonessa, scored 18 goals, 16 in WE League, 0 in WE League Cup, 2 in Empress' Cup, and 0 in AFC Women's Champions' League; also, she scored 11 more goals than the previous season. The fact that the comparison is in bold and with an exclamation mark (+11!) means that the difference from the previous season is more than 5 goals better or worse than the goals scored in that season; otherwise, the number in bracket isn't in bold and has no punctuation. I don't make comparisons with the previous season if the player was in a different league, even if I have the data from that league, because I don't think it makes sense to compare the number of goals scored in WE League with those scored in Nadeshiko League Division 1 or in NWSL: in those cases, a note will state: (can't be properly compared). If a player was in WE League for only a part of the season, the goals she scored there will be counted, but no goal in other leagues will be counted (for instance, if she was in the chart, Uno Shiragaki would only have the goals she scored in Japan in 2025, and not also the ones she scored in the USA; I'd anyway compare her record with the previous season, although a note would state that she didn't fully play it). Also: when two players were even on goals, I've written first the one with more goals in WE League (arguably, the most important competition); when they were even in WE League goals, I just used alphabetical order.

These are the first 20 positions of the chart (actually the first 23 position: 4 players were tied at the 20th place, so I added 3 positions to accomodate them all):

WE League Seasonal scorers

1 - Mei Shimada - M. H. I. Urawa Red Ladies - 21 (15 / 5 / 1 / 0)(+12!)
2 - Riko Yoshida - INAC Kobe Leonessa - 18 (16 / 0 / 2 / 0)(+11!)
3 - Yuzuho Shiokoshi - Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza - 15 (9 / 2 / 1 / 3)(+7!)
4 - Mami Ueno - Sanfrecce Hiroshima Regina - 14 (8 / 4 / 2 / 0)(+3)
5 - Moka Hiwatari - Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza - 13 (7 / 3 / 0 / 3)(+5)
6 - Yoshino Nakashima - Sanfrecce Hiroshima Regina - 11 (3 / 4 / 4 / 0)(+8!)
7 - Yuma Saito - RB OMiya Ardija Women - 10 (7 / 3 / 0 / 0)(+4) (but actually can't be properly compared)*
- Yume Takikawa - Albirex Niigata Ladies - 10 (7 / 2 / 1 / 0)(-2)
- Ririka Tanno - M. H. I. Urawa Red Ladies - 10 (6 / 2 / 2 / 0)(+8!)
- Hanon Nishio - RB OMiya Ardija Women - 10 (5 / 5 / 0 / 0)(+9!)
- Rikako Kobayashi - Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza - 10 (2 / 6 / 2 / 0)(+10!)
12 - Yui Narumiya - INAC Kobe Leonessa - 9 (8 / 0 / 1 / 0)(=)
13 - Miki Ito - M. H. I. Urawa Red Ladies - 8 (7 / 1 / 0 / 0)(-1)
- Mayu Otake - Nojima Stella Kanagawa Sagamihara - 8 (7 / 1 / 0 / 0)(=)
- Chinari Sasai - Nojima Stella Kanagawa Sagamihara - 8 (5 / 2 / 1 / 0)(+7!)
- Chihiro Yamaguchi - JEF United Ichihara Chiba Ladies - 8 (5 / 2 / 1 / 0)(+7!)
- Miharu Shinjo - Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza - 8 (5 / 0 / 1 / 2)(+4)
18 - Fukina Mizuno - INAC Kobe Leonessa - 7 (7 / 0 / 0 / 0)(+2)
- Nanami Kitamura - Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza - 7 (4 / 1 / 1 / 1)(+2)
20 - Anon Tsuda - Mynavi Sendai Ladies - 6 (6 / 0 / 0 / 0)(+4)
- Yuina Yamamoto - Albirex Niigata Ladies - 6 (6 / 0 / 0 / 0)(+4)
- Funa Yanase - Sanfrecce Hiroshima Regina - 6 (5 / 1 / 0 / 0)(+4)
- Ruka Norimatsu - RB OMiya Ardija Women - 6 (2 / 4 / 0 / 0)(+6!)

* in the season 2024-2025, Yuma Saito actually joined WE League and RB Omiya Ardija Women mid-season, after having scored 20 goals for Via Materusu Miyazaki in the season 2025 of Nadeshiko League 1.


Some observations:
- You can see many players having jumped ahead by many goals: it's not only a question of individual performances, since season 2024-2025 had seen a particular low record of seasonal goals scored. The winner of this chart in the last season, Carlota Suárez, had won with "just" 14 goals, who would have granted just a 4th place this year, when Mei Shimada, 2025-2026's top-ranked player, scored one and a half that number of goals, with 21. Consequentely, scoring the exact same number of goals as the last season typically makes you lose some positions: Yui Narumiya, having scored 9 goals in both seasons, falls from 7th to 12th position; Mayu Otake, who once again scored 8, drops two positions, from 11th to 13th.
- Some players remained in the same team and scored even more than before (Mei Shimada, Mami Ueno); some others changed their team and saw a similar scoring boost (Riko Yoshida, Yuzuho Shiokoshi).
- There's a good number of youngsters who, last year, were out of this chart and had scored just a few goals (if any) and now they made top 20 instead: Anon Tsuda (18 yo), Miharu Shinjo (19 yo), Chinari Sasai (21 yo), Ririka Tanno (22 yo), Hanon Nishio (23 yo), Yuina Yamamoto (23 yo): a good omen for our league and our NT. 20 yo Moka Hiwatari had already made top 20 last year, but she jumped from 11th plce to 5th! Not sure where Riko Yoshida stands, since she'll turn 24 in three days (is she still a "youngster"?).
- Along with these youngsters, there are long-time veterans up there: Mayu Otake (29 yo), Mami Ueno (29 yo), Chihiro Yamaguchi (30 yo), Miki Ito (30 yo), Ruka Norimatsu (30 yo), Yui Narumiya (31 yo). Kudos to them!
- The seasonal scorers' winner (Mei Shimada) is different from WE League's top-scorer (Riko Yoshida): it was since 2016 that this wasn't happening (back then Kumi Yokoyama had beaten Mina Tanaka, despite being second to her in the league; in 2020 there had been a tie between Haruka Hamada and Rikako Kobayashi, but the former was anyway the league's top-scorer).
- Talking about Rikako Kobayashi: her career has been plagued by injuries; in fact she hadn't scored any goals last season. This year she managed to once again make seasonal scorers' top 20 in an unusual way: she only scored 2 goals in WE League, but she was the top scorer of We League Cup with 6 goals!
- A somehow similar case was Yoshino Nakashima, who managed to score 8 more goals than last season: a good portion of them were the 4 goals that made her the top scorer of the Empress' Cup.
- AFC Women's Champions' League didn't change things much, although Moka Hiwatari and Yuzuho Shiokoshi, scoring 3 goals each in that competition, significantly shored up their numbers.
- Yuma Saito can have scored 4 goals more than last season for RB Omiya Ardija Women, but actually she had joined the team mid-season in 2024-2025. In the whole 2025 season with Via Materasu Miyazaki in Nadeshiko League Division 1, she had scored 20 goals (second scorer in the rankings there), so, in her case, it's almost impossible to make any comparison that actually makes sense.
- Notable names from last year who are now out of top 20 Seasonal Scorers:
Carlota Suárez, the seasonal top-scorer from 2024-2025, got back playing in the Spanish League, where she scored 7 goals for Tenerife ;
Miyu Yakata, the second placed from last year, has only scored 5 goals for Mynavi Sendai Ladies, dropping down at 24th place: any injury for her that I wasn't aware of?
Hana Takahashi has scored just 4 goals: last season she had 12 (-8, from 2nd, tied with two other players, to 35th);
Yuzuki Yamamoto had scored just one goal this season before transferring to the NWSL, at Denver;
Akimi Kawafune dropped from 9 goals to 5 (-4, from 7th to 24th);
Maya Hijkata, who had scored 7 last season, transferred to FA-WSL, at Aston Villa.
Carla Morera, another Spaniard who had played for INAC Kobe Leonessa (by the way: they finally won the title without their overseas players ), is now at Alavés;
Kozue Setoguchi scored 2 goals less, bringing her from 17th to 35th;
I don't think 19 yo Satoko Fujisaki saw much playing time for Urawa this season, and anyway she didn't score any goals;
32 yo Miyuki Takahashi only scored one goal for Chifure AS Elfen Saitama this year, compared to the 6 from last season;
Arisa Minamino has retired ;
Oto Kanno and Haruna Aikawa are, if I am not wrong, both injured.

That's all I had to say, and it was a mouthful. Feel free to comment.

 

Game (3):

1 Ehime
2 Orca
3 Harima
4 Viama
5 draw
6 Shizuoka
7 Yuika Sakurai (Ehime), Sonoko Chiba (Harima), Yuzuki Tsuchiya (Via), Kumi Yokoyama (Shizuoka), Misuzu Uchida (Sfida)
8 Mitsuki Horie (Sfida)
9 Kumi Yokoyama (Shizuoka)
10 nobody