AFC U-14 Girls' Regional Championship East 2016/Group A  2nd Match  vs U-14 Korea Republic Women’s National Team
2016-5-18 (Wed.) - 14:00   Playing Time: 70min. (35min.×2)
National Football Training Centre Pitch 5 (China/Beijing)

U-14 Korea Republic Women’s National Team   0-2 (0-2, 0-0)  U-14 Japan Women's Selection

Scores
6'   YOSHIZUMI Warai (U-14 Japan Women's Selection team)
35+１'   ABE Ayane (U-14 Japan Women's Selection team)

Line-ups
GK: OBA Shu
DF: NOGUCHI Akari, KAWAGISHI Emika, TABATA Haruna, MATSUHISA Kanna
MF: TAKARA Kotone, ABE Ayane, FUCHIGAMI Nonoka, YOSHIZUMI Warai
FW: ITO Megumi, SHIROWA Reina

Substitutes
GK: TAKESHITA Kanasa
FP: SHIMADA Mei, IMADATE Nodoka, KIMURA Chisa, KASAI Yui, KATANODA Suzu, KAWAMOTO Sae

52'   ABE Ayane → SHIMADA Mei
58'   SHIROWA Reina → KIMURA Chisa
65'   TAKARA Kotone → KAWAMOTO Sae
67'   KAWAGISHI Emika → KASAI Yui
69'   YOSHIZUMI Warai → IMADATE Nodoka

Match Report

One day after their championship opener in the AFC U-14 Girls Regional Championship, the U-14 Japan Women's Selection team played their important second match against Korea on 18 May. “You might think that we didn't play how we wanted against Northern Mariana Islands, but we only managed to cover our small mistakes with our techniques and physicality. But it's not going to happen in our game against Korea,” YODOKAWA Tomoharu said in their meeting on the previous night. And as he insisted, his team came in the match with new mind-set.

The temperature was 35 degrees yet the humidity was low plus there was mind wind, so the WBGT was actually 26 degrees. Still, it gave the players more heat than in their previous game, which began at 17:00. They kicked off the game in the heat.

Three minutes into the game, Japan grabbed the momentum. ITO Megumi (JFA Academy Fukushima) took the ball that was dropped by SHIROWA Reina (JFA Academy Fukushima) and fed a through pass to the right side. YOSHIZUMI Warai (Cerezo Osaka Sakai Girls) ran into the ball and fired in shot, but it went outside of the goalmouth. Yet three minutes later, Japan scored the game's first goal. Yoshizumi agains received a through pass from Ito and kicked a low cross from outside on the right side of the box, but it was kicked away by a Korean defender. Yoshizumi failed to get the ball, but Shirowa put it back into the goal area and Yoshizumi netted a shot with her right leg from a spot with not much angle.

Japan was excited with the goal, but fell into a peril right after. Korean ace CHUN Garam robbed the ball while Japan was trying to bring it forward in the middle, giving him a free space in the box. But Japan goalkeeper OBA Shu (JFA Academy Fukushima) saved a pair of shots Chun had to preserve Japan's lead.

After that, both teams created some scoring chances but could not find the back of the net. In the additional time, Japan's Yoshizumi had the ball on the right side and sharply dribbled up. She was fouled in the box and ABE Ayane (Albirex Niigata Ladies U-15) kicked the penalty kick into the net to give Japan a 2-0 lead at halftime.

Japan continued to create chances from crosses effectively utilizing the right side in the second half, but they weren't able to connect them for goals. Yet they firmly defended their own goal against Korea's offence, which they used a lot of long balls. Japanese substituted players came through as well, and Japan kept their lead they built in the first half and posted consecutive victory.

With the result, Japan retained the top spot in the standings with six points and clinched a semifinals berth with one game left in the group stage. Their final group stage game against host China will be played on the 19th. China is placed runner-up with four points. Japan will qualify through atop in the group with a draw or better against China.

Assistant Coach Comment

KANO Michihisa, Assistant Coach (JFA National Training Centre Coach/SAGAWA SHIGA FC)
This is our third day in China and our players have gotten used to the life customs, especially in the eating part. Before yesterday’s game, we watched a game between Korea and China, who are in the same group with us, and we saw them playing a tense battle in person. And each of us shared what he or she thought of it and we made it clearer on how we are supposed to play, before we got in today’s game. In our meeting before the game, we said to ourselves that we would play as the entire squad and keep challenging not being afraid of making mistakes.

In the game, we worked on what we tried to do and post the win. We clinched the knockout stage in two games with this win, and that’s the biggest accomplishment. We are going to look back on today’s game and issues out of it, and capitalize on those for our upcoming games, and hopefully we are going to earn the result we want in the very end.

Players' Comments

GK #1  OBA Shu (JFA Academy Fukushima)
We played our second game in this international tournament against Korea today. The goals for this game were that we were going to win giving up no goals to the opponents and because I was given the captain role, I wanted to lead the team speaking louder. I could talk to my teammates and we ended up not giving up any goals, so that was great. After we scored, we allowed them to make a 1-on-1 situation, but we shut her shooting routes by us coming back to defend quickly. On this scene, we anticipated the play making adjustments on our positioning, and that’s why I believe we could stop her shot. We are going to keep making good preparations and win games not allowing goals.

FP #17  YOSHIZUMI Warai (Cerezo Osaka Sakai Girls)
My individual goal for this game was to play tenacious defence and score a goal. As we actually got to play, I think I was able to move in good timing using free spaces. And I was able to get involved in two scoring plays. What went wrong was that I made too many unnecessary fouls. Sometimes on plays you don’t get called fouls in Japan, you do get called fouls overseas, and I put our team in dangerous situations so many times.  So, maybe I can’t change that right away, I still want to change my awareness on that in our practices.

The Korean players had gotten bigger physically since last year and got better in their passing works as well. But we didn’t get threatened by them playing on par with them in 1-on-1 situations and were able to win it. We are going to continue to play our Japanese football and do our best to get through the group stage in the first place.

FP #12  TAKARA Kotone (Vicsale Okinawa Football Club Navita)
We’d beaten Korea in our trip to their country last year, and they played in a different style as they tried to avenge that. They played a passing game, but they put a lot of long balls this time. We watched their game yesterday and after that, we set our goal to touch the ball faster than them. Yet as we actually played against them, many times we weren’t able to do it and we didn’t do things we did against Northern Mariana Islands in this game. But we still did do what we were supposed to do for this game and that was good. We are going to win our next game against China tomorrow outplaying them mentally as well.

Schedule

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