The final will be on Friday 1 August – The 19th All Japan Woman’s Youth (U-15) Championship presented by NIKE.

Nittele Menina Serius (Kanto 2/Tokyo), reached the final with a good performance of scoring 25 goals and conceding no goal in four games. This team was formed in 2012, one year after Nadeshiko Japan (Japan Women International Team) won the FIFA Women World Cup in 2011. The team consists of junior high school students only as compared to Nittele Menina, team including all students from junior high school to high school. Although there are many players who wasn’t selected for Menina in this team said Mochizuki Takashi, head coach, they are getting stronger through playing in tough Tokyo ladies soccer league. Now that the members joined the team three years ago, this year marks the time to get result. Mochizuki, head coach, pointed out “the squad has not been playing the offense and defense the way we wanted in this tournament” but they stepped up the tournament showing no sign of fragility. At the final, the squad aims to win the championship, in addition to inherited skillful play and decisive play as Ueki Riko said “we are committed to run hard as we can.”

On the other hand, Urawa Ladies Jr. Youth (Kanto 1/Saitama) consist of only first and second grade students as third grade students promoted earlier than usual to youth team. Usually the team belongs to Saitama prefecture league and play against adult and university teams. They are learning lessons for playing in the environment as Nagai Yoshiaki, head coach said “the player can acquire skill for enduring the physical strength” and Inoue Moe, player, said “As we can’t beat them physically, we are aiming to brush up our skills and passing the ball for victory.” Having won the quarterfinal match by penalty shootout in the tournament, they made come-from-behind victory, demonstrating their winning mentality. They have a real team spirit for going out to see town of Osaka and played bowling together on the day off, regardless of grade. Last year they lost in first round match, was expected to win the championship six years in row. Having had a bitter experience of not achieving the goal last year, Kutsuwada Ayumi is determined to “Definitely win the championship this year and get a foothold of start making a new record.”

Game for winning the number one spot in Japan is coming up, see what the game like. The final‘s kick off is at 12:30.

The 19th All Japan Woman’s Youth (U-15) Championship presented by NIKE

Sat. 26 July to Fri. 1 August 2014
J-GREEN Sakai
The event detail (Japanese version only)