In the morning on the fourth day of the Kagoshima camp, the Japan National Women’s U-19 shortlisted squad went through a training session centred on recovery.

Following the warm up of 10-minute jog and stretching, young girls squad worked on foot dodgeball. Its rule was that the players, divided into infield and outfield, stand in a circle. Outfielders have three balls and try to hit infielders with passes. Outfielders lose a ball with every missed pass, and then they have one fewer balls available.

In the afternoon, the squad had passing and controlling drills, 4-on-2s, 6-on-6 matches in a half-sized field and an intrasquad scrimmage at the end.

The topic of the meeting at night was presentations, where groups of five players shared their versions of the team concept idea. The groups had tried to come up with it since the day two. “Tandai Shinsho,” handed out by the group of Seike Kiko, Ichise Nana, Sugita Hina, Miura Narumi and Kitagawa Hikaru, was selected by majority vote among the five concepts presented. “Tandai Shinsho” means to be highly courageous, bold and vigorous but at the same time careful and compassionate to others. With the slogan “Tandai Shinsho,” the team will unite to go for their target, which is the ticket for the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup scheduled next year.

Players Comments

MIYAJI Asuka(Okayama Sakuyo High School)
In the passing and controlling training, my first touches of the ball were bad and that kept me from passing the ball quickly, so I want to improve my fundamental skills more and more. I’m not good at defending 1-on-1 situations. I will practice more step works and try to change the weakness to my strength. In our team defence, I personally am not good enough yet at looking up and judging situations, because I am too occupied for thinking about the approaching distance, speed and the ball. So I will try to look around more and predict the next play. We have only limited time left in this camp, so I will try what I can do and hopefully it leads to my development

HASEGAWA Yui(Nippon TV Beleza)
As we had a match yesterday, we worked out in a relaxing and fun mood in the morning to get ready for the afternoon training. At the meeting before the practice, we looked back yesterday’s match and discussed what to improve and adjust. In the afternoon, we went through the training which focused on passes to build up and go forward and the speed of vertical passes. In defence, we tried to work on how to challenge opponents by predicting the next play and get the ball as a team. In the match at the end, we had good intentions to defend, approached to the ball and intercepted it well. But the strong defensive approach led our offensive side to lose the ball easily. I felt that we need better skills and judgement to coordinate offence and defence as a team. We don’t have so much time in this camp left. We will move forward to improve what we found today and work altogether to get better.

MIZUTANI Yuki(JFA Academy Fukushima)
In the morning training, we worked on a ball hitting game and juggling drill in a group of six. We enjoyed the recovery workout with some laughter. In the afternoon, we mainly went through defensive practice. What I learned today was how to make good predictions and how to change paces. We actually tried to predict the next place that the ball may come out to by looking at how a ball holder possessed the ball, where she was looking, and what her kicking motion was like. And we also tried to approach the ball by changing paces at times. As a result, we were able to cause mistakes and get the ball, so I learned it’s important to predict the next play and change paces. Today I learned things in defence and will learn more about them and master them in the rest of the camp.

TAKEMURA Misaki (Hinomoto Gakuen Senior High School)
Today in the afternoon, our training started with small-numbered situations and gradually moved onto game-style practices. We found in the last match that the distance in one-on-one situations was our homework, and it’s good that we could keep it in mind throughout the practice today. As the training was becoming more like game-like practice, I strongly felt it’s important to have good defensive coordination such as who goes for the ball as the first defender and to keep communicating with teammates. I wasn’t able to play as I wanted in a match and got many more things to improve. At night, we presented the team slogan idea that we worked on in a group. With the slogan that we set up altogether in mind, I will work harder to win the world championship and also to stay on the team to fight on the world stage

SHIMIZU Risa(Nippon TV Beleza)
I practiced “defence”, one of training camp target, in the afternoon again. I paid attention to how to decide the first defender and keeping defence players in line for building up as a team. As I usually play in the different team with different tactics and thinking, I could not play as the way I wanted to play. I tried to share our intention by calling out but it was difficult to do that while playing and that is something needed to improve. Training camp is numbered, I want to stay focused on the every training program and overcome some issues.

KOBAYASHI Rikako(Tokiwagi Gakuen High School)
In the afternoon training focusing on defence, we were able to intercept the ball in good formation by sharing idea of where to intercept between front players and back players, we had a good combination. We played intra-squad game at the end. We played focusing on what we practiced - the timing of turning on switch, who should be the first defender, etc. In the intra-squad game, all the players took care of defence but there are many scenes we should have been much careful. And the issues still remain. There were few times we reached to the box when the attack after intercepting the ball and build up because we had too much attention on defence. Personally, I realized I need to improve how to prompt the pass from team mates. I felt I should prompt the ball more and keep the ball in order to start the attack from the areas closer to the box. As we set the team slogan as “to be bold and prudent”, I want to make a team suitable for the slogan.

Schedule

*The schedule is subject to change due to condition of the team, the weather, etc.