A day after the match against the United State, Japan National Women’s U-23 Team started with recovery regimen to remove fatigue. Since the next match is scheduled on right on next day, the team couldn’t afford to waste time to prepare.

In the afternoon, the practice was centred on ball possession. In one drill, the players tried to move around the ball in a limited area of space with three groups of three players working together. Two groups were the offence trying to connect the total of ten passes as the other group of three defended.

Then the team went on to five on five with one more player serving the ball, again in a limited area given, which was targeted to simulate a real-match situation. Having “the server” player let the attacking players take the ball to the goal easier and at the same time helped them have the third player involved in the play.

Later, the players worked on their own to wrap up their final preparation for the match next day.

Comments

GK18 YAMASHITA Ayaka（Nippon Television Beleza）
In the morning, we got separated into the recovery group and training group, and the recovery group spent good amount of time for resting bodies.
In the afternoon, we prepared for the match next day and the drills were very practical. The Sweden team have many tall players, so the goalkeepers mainly worked on cross balls and high balls.
We will take advantage of what we learned from the United States match, and we will play as a team to get a win.

MF14 INOUE Ayaka（Vegalta Sendai Ladies）
In the first match against the United States, we made many simple mistakes in passing and our combination wasn’t good both in offence and defence.
Tomorrow, we will try to make fewer mistakes, always have a better vision on the pitch and make good decisions. No matter what, we will win, play a good match and make it meaningful for the following match.

DF3 MIYAKE Shiori（INAC Kobe Leonessa）
In this training, we did passing and ball controlling drills, five on three possession drill and five one five. In the passing and controlling drills, my focus was not only passing speed but also communicating what I want the receiver of the pass to do next with the ball after getting a pass from me. In the five on three and five on five, I often lost the ball with simple mistakes. When you can’t move the ball around with limited space, you can’t do the same either in real matches. I want to cut down those mistakes. Tomorrow we will play against Sweden. The match against the U.S. was a disappointing one, so I will stick to getting a win tomorrow.

Schedule

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