It was the eighth day of the training camp for U-16 Japan Women’s National Team preparing for the upcoming AFC U-16 Women’s Championship.

The team went out for a walk around their hotel in the morning to get their mind refreshed. The little excursion gave the players a chance to get the feel of Chinese culture. Goalkeeper YONEZAWA Moeka said "the lively Chinese streets were overwhelming." Under the cloudy sky in the afternoon, the workout started with agility drills.

The players were instructed to pay attention to every step they made, not just carelessly going through the move. Then with the players divided into groups of six, various attacking build-ups were reviewed. In the end, the squad played a scrimmage simulating the first match of the tournament two days later to wrap up the 90-minute training session.

Players' Comments

MF ＃17  KANNO Oto (Nippon TV Menina)
Today’s workout was at a different field from yesterday. It took us long to get used to the environment, but we could focus on the training somehow. We still need to make minor improvements in our mental aspect and the quality of passes, so we want to do that in the training tomorrow. We have only one more day until the first match. We will take every training and every meal seriously to get ready.

DF ＃39  USHIJIMA Riko (Hinomoto Gakuen Senior High School)
In the training today, we went through agility drills, passing drills and our defensive tactics and moved on to shooting drills and a scrimmage in the end. It was the same time period as the match for us to play in the tournament. We couldn’t get our intensity level up enough in the warm-up until our coach Okamoto told us to. We have to start doing things by ourselves without getting told to do those. We want to have quality training tomorrow, get ready for the tournament and win the championship at all costs.

DF ＃5  TAKAHIRA Miyu (JFA Academy Fukushima)
In the afternoon session, we worked out with three different themes. They are possessions, shots and games. In that training, I found what I was still missing, which is the accuracy of my balls. When I had to feed it to the head of our forwards, some of my balls fell short before reaching them. I want to work on this new assignment in the next training. Then I want our team to be united for the first match.

Schedule

Note: The schedule is subject to change due to the team condition, the weather, etc.

AFC U-16 Women’s Championship China 2015 

Japan is in Group B. Group A includes Chaina PR, Thailand, Iran, Korea Republic.
Top two teams will qualify for FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup Jordan 2016.