It was a lovely dry weather from the morning on 20 May. Nadeshiko Japan had training sessions in both morning and afternoon on the 3rd day of their training.

Before the morning training, the players had a photo shooting session with new uniform whose chest, number and players’ names are designed in the team’s colour pink. This will be used for the first time in the MS&AD NADESHIKO CUP 2015 on 24 May.

After the peaceful photo session, the team started the hard morning session. They firstly had “Pass and Dash” and sliding tackle training, and they repeatedly checked their attacking formation from throw-ins and corner kicks. 

In the afternoon, the team had training sessions with U-18 players of a local high-school men’s football team to practice their defense strategies in each position and both offence and defense situations especially focusing on corner kicks. 

The last training session of the afternoon lasted 2.5 hours, Nadeshiko Japan had a 11-a-side practice match against this local high school team using a whole pitch. During the match, Mr. SASAKI Norio, the Head Coach of the team, checked the team’s condition by changing players and their positions. The team allowed the high school men’s players a goal in the beginning of the match, but after that ANDO Kozue cut in the opponent’s pass work with an interception and equalised.

Players' Comments

GK ♯1  FUKUMOTO Miho (Okayama Yunogo Belle)
One of my focuses is to improve and make good combinations with all of my other teammates. Especially, we checked detailed positioning to improve the combination play between the goalkeeper and defenders to extend our defense capacity as much as possible. It was the first day for us to check set-plays well in this camp. I just expect that we can get good results in the future matches after the series of these training sessions. We Nadeshiko Japan don’t have many tall players, but I want to keep myself physically fit enough to protect our goal.

MF ♯9  KAWASUMI Nahomi (INAC Kobe Leonessa)
I know that we have to play with 100% of what we have in any big official matches like the World Cup. In that sense, I just want to show all of what we can do in the next match against New Zealand National Team on 24 May. I think we can be very positive trying many things and once we find any issues we can improve them before the first match of the World Cup. I have played against Sarah Gregorius who is number 10 of New Zealand, since she plays for AS Elfen Saitama. She has advantages like controlling the ball well and making good forms to score in the penalty area, so I’ll defend her to avoid these advantages. 

DF ♯20  KAWAMURA Yuri (Vegalta Sendai Ladies)
In the practice match against local high school men’s players, we couldn’t steal the ball well from them. Even when we could do it, our FW players were too isolated to make an effective attack; we should have moved the ball around much widely. For the next time, I will be more careful in limiting the opponents’ passing to avoid shots, and I want to contribute more to the team’s offense activities. It is absolutely nice for me to be chosen as a squad player, but this is the most important time to keep up; if I improve myself, that contributes to the team directly, so I will keep working hard with a strong motivation that I’ll get a regular position in the team. 

JFA-TV(Japanese version only)

MS&AD NADESHIKO CUP 2015

Nadeshiko Japan(Japan Women's National Team) vs. New Zealand Women's National Team
Sun. 24 May 19:10 Kick Off (Estimated Time)
Kagawa / Kagawa Pref. Marugame Stadium
Ticket Information (Japanese version only)

KIRIN CHALLENGE CUP 2015

Nadeshiko Japan(Japan Women's National Team) vs. Italy Women’s National Football Team
Thu. 28 May 19:20 Kick Off (Estimated Time)
Nagano / MINAMI NAGANO SPORTSPARK
Ticket Information (Japanese version only)

FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015

Information