Sports

Japan’s ambitious WE League aims to empower in historic first season

In a video proven on the finish of Monday’s information convention selling the WE League’s inaugural season, Chairperson Kikuko Okajima and a trio of gamers with worldwide pedigree kick a ball via glass plates representing limitations going through feminine gamers in Japan, with the damaged shards set to be repurposed into the league’s championship trophy.

On the nostril? Maybe. However with a reputation that stands for “Ladies’s Empowerment,” Japan’s first skilled ladies’s soccer league isn’t delicate about its intent to revolutionize the game.

“Three years because it was first conceptualized, the WE League now exists because of the efforts of everybody who needs to see ladies’s soccer develop,” Okajima mentioned. “We wish to succeed and enhance the place of not solely ladies’s soccer, however ladies’s sports activities as an entire in Japan.”

The league’s targets each on and off the pitch could also be formidable, however they’re definitely welcome. Over 30 years have elapsed for the reason that founding of the L. League — Japan’s first nationwide ladies’s competitors — however successive iterations have remained semi-professional at most, with company workforce house owners supporting most gamers by hiring them as firm staff and solely a handful of stars incomes skilled contracts.

“This actually appears like a brand new begin for ladies’s soccer,” INAC Kobe Leonessa defender Minabi Moriya advised Radio Kansai. “Till now, solely gamers at INAC have been in a position to give attention to soccer, but it surely’s a giant step to have that grow to be true for each workforce.

“Now that younger ladies can dream of changing into professional soccer gamers, we have now a duty to show our matches into even greater occasions.”

Whereas the pandemic will maintain preliminary crowds smaller than officers would have most well-liked, the league stays dedicated to attracting youthful followers, ladies and households — demographics that had been comparatively under-represented within the Nadeshiko League.

Serving to to perform that may be a numerous array of company companions, together with furnishings producer and title sponsor Yogibo — which has pledged to assist golf equipment create sensory rooms for followers with gentle and sound sensitivities — and streetwear model X-Lady, which is outfitting seven of the league’s 11 groups.

Amongst these carrying these uniforms can be international gamers that the league hopes will assist home gamers additional develop their expertise and put together for the sorts of opposition they’ll face in worldwide tournaments.

Each the WE League and the Japan Soccer Affiliation have provided golf equipment monetary help for signing international gamers. The JFA helps groups foot the invoice for gamers from Southeast Asia — a transfer that mirrors the J. League’s efforts within the area — whereas the WE League’s cash covers signings from international locations on the prime of the FIFA world rankings.

“I feel bringing that have and professionalism into this setting will assist,” Australian midfielder Alex Chidiac mentioned when requested what she hopes to carry to JEF United Chiba. “It would assist me as nicely, to have the ability to adapt not solely to the soccer however to life right here too.

“I’ve at all times admired how the Japanese performed soccer. We (Australia) performed towards Japan they usually at all times beat us. They’re very skillful and I’ll enhance lots by being right here.”

Officers hope these circumstances will enable groups to develop stronger gamers able to contributing to a revitalization of Nadeshiko Japan, which has struggled to return to the peaks it attained in 2011 when Homare Sawa and firm gained the Ladies’s World Cup in Germany.

Whereas Japan did go on to win silver on the 2012 London Olympics and attain one other World Cup ultimate in 2015, the ladies’s soccer panorama has irrefutably modified over the past decade, with the Americas and Europe particularly investing closely of their golf equipment and leagues.

The brand new steadiness of energy has left Japan unable to advance deep into main tournaments as simply because it as soon as did — head coach Asako Takakura’s sides exited the 2019 World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics within the spherical of 16 and quarterfinals, respectively.

“I feel that slightly than Japan’s stage dropping, it’s a case of different international locations’ ranges rising,” Okajima mentioned. “In Europe, the extent of play is rising in international locations whose leagues have professionalized. On the 2019 World Cup, all the quarterfinalists apart from the US had been European, and it’s clear that professionalization has helped competitiveness.”

Chairperson Kikuko Okajima, a former soccer player who represented Japan in the 1980s | WE LEAGUE
Chairperson Kikuko Okajima, a former soccer participant who represented Japan within the Eighties | WE LEAGUE

The WE League’s largest influence might come within the type of its social activism because it seeks to advertise better roles for ladies in a rustic that has usually relegated them to the sidelines. Golf equipment will finally be required to keep up gender parity amongst their staffers and have a minimum of one feminine government. Gamers can be inspired to check for his or her teaching badges, within the hope that after their time as WE Leaguers they are going to be capable of assist increase new generations to return.

Whereas the coronavirus pandemic implies that the WE League gained’t get the identical stage of fanfare that the J. League did when it launched in 1993, it will likely be in a position to depend on that league’s cooperation and help. 4 of the seven J. League golf equipment with WE League groups additionally participated within the founding of Japan’s skilled males’s league, which is now thought of the most effective in Asia.

“We wish to give the WE League as a lot help as we are able to,” J. League Chairman Mitsuru Murai mentioned. “In a way our fates are shared.

“Rising the variety of feminine soccer followers is a matter of nice significance for the J. League’s growth, and due to that we wish to help the WE League with its competitions, advertising and marketing and group relations.”

There’s maybe no better illustration of how far the WE League will divert from “enterprise as normal” than Okajima herself, who left the monetary sector after 30 years to grow to be the league’s first chairperson.

The 63-year-old — who was among the many first technology of gamers to signify Japan — has saved her dwelling in Baltimore and can primarily work from the US, an association made potential as soon as the JFA realized that untethering from convention rooms might open a world of potentialities throughout the pandemic.

“I used to be comfortable taking part in in Japan after which I began to be actually energetic and profitable within the enterprise world, and I’ve come again from the U.S. to steer this,” Okajima advised The Japan Occasions in July 2020.

“We’re making an attempt to think about a special period.”

Urawa Reds, the reigning Nadeshiko League champion, will be considered one of the teams to beat in the WE League's inaugural season. | KYODO
Urawa Reds, the reigning Nadeshiko League champion, can be thought of one of many groups to beat within the WE League’s inaugural season. | KYODO

The Golf equipment

Groups will face one another dwelling and away in a single-stage, 22-round season. Every workforce will obtain two bye weeks, throughout which they are going to conduct actions selling the rules and beliefs of the WE League.

The season can be divided by a winter break lasting from early December via late February, in deference to the variety of golf equipment in areas with extreme winter climate. The marketing campaign is anticipated to conclude on the weekend of Might 21-22.

MyNavi Sendai — The Yurtec Stadium residents can be spending their first season below MyNavi, which bought the workforce from the J. League’s Vegalta Sendai over the winter. Supervisor Takeo Matsuda has expertise with various ladies’s golf equipment, having gained the Nadeshiko League 4 occasions with Tokyo Verdy Beleza between 2005 and 2008.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Urawa Reds — The reigning Nadeshiko League champion boasts one of many nation’s finest academy setups, with 13 gamers hailing from the youth workforce and a further 4 concurrently registered with the junior youth squad. Urawa despatched 4 gamers to the Tokyo Olympics, together with veteran striker Yuika Sugasawa and defender Moeka Minami.

Omiya Ardija Ventus — The J. League membership absorbed former Nadeshiko League second-division facet FC Jumonji Ventus with a purpose to construct its ladies’s workforce, bringing in various former nationwide workforce gamers, together with defenders Aya Sameshima and captain Saori Ariyoshi. Norio Sasaki, who led Japan to the 2011 Ladies’s World Cup title, is overseeing the workforce as its basic supervisor.

Chifure AS Elfen Saitama — Shaped in 1991, Elfen has a long-standing fame as one of many Japanese ladies’s sport’s most devoted grassroots organizations. Primarily based west of the Arakawa River that splits Saitama Prefecture, the membership is operated by Chifure Cosmetics, which first grew to become concerned with the workforce as a naming rights sponsor in 2016. Elfen’s largest preseason signings have been former Nadeshiko Japan midfielder Emi Yamamoto in addition to Filipino striker Sarina Bolden.

JEF United Ichihara Chiba — A Nadeshiko League mainstay whose lone main title got here within the type of the 2017 League Cup, JEF has moved rapidly to carry worldwide expertise to its squad. Along with Australia midfielder Alex Chidiac and Philippines striker Quinley Quezada, the workforce signed Taiwan goalkeeper Cheng Ssu-yu from Okayama Yunogo Belle in addition to Japanese midfielders Kirara Fujio and Natsuki Kishiawa, who’ve not too long ago plied their trades in Brazil and Germany.

NTV Tokyo Verdy Beleza — One of many founding members of the unique L. League in 1989, Beleza is by far probably the most storied ladies’s soccer workforce in Japan — with much more success than Tokyo Verdy’s males’s workforce, which has languished within the second division for over a decade. Beleza’s trophy case contains 17 first-division titles, 15 Empress’s Cups and 7 league cups to its title in addition to stars like returning legend Rumi Utsugi and striker Jun Endo.

Nojima Stella Kanagawa Sagamihara — After a irritating preseason by which the workforce allowed 13 targets however scored only one, Sagamihara signed a pair of abroad strikers in German Cindy Koenig and former Nigeria worldwide Uchechi Sunday. With each gamers needing time to combine into the squad after competing their quarantines, supervisor Makoto Kitano should depend on veteran defender Minami Ishida and midfield captain Arisa Matsubara to carry the fort.

AC Nagano Parceiro — One of many prime locations for touring followers this season can be Nagano U Stadium, which opened in 2015 and is the league’s prime soccer-specific facility. There they’ll see a promising Parceiro squad together with returnee Shino Kunisawa, who spent six seasons in Nagano earlier than going to Italy’s first-division Serie A in 2019.

Albirex Niigata — One of many few golf equipment apart from INAC, Urawa or Beleza to commonly contribute gamers to the nationwide workforce, Albirex has been a first-division mainstay since 2007, ending runner-up in 4 Empress’s Cup finals since then. Whereas the workforce shares its title and badge with its J. League “brothers,” the ladies’s workforce cut up into its personal firm on the finish of 2018 with a purpose to higher help its group actions within the area.

INAC Kobe Leonessa — Japan’s most profitable impartial ladies’s workforce, INAC cruised to 3 straight Nadeshiko League titles between 2011 and 2013 — a interval by which it boasted lots of the nationwide workforce’s prime stars. Kobe final completed under third place in 2014 however has not lifted a trophy for the reason that 2016 Empress’s Cup. The workforce has made up for various offseason departures — together with new Arsenal signing Mana Iwabuchi — with a number of signings, together with Japan goalkeeper Ayaka Yamashida and Singapore defender Rosnani Azman.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima Regina — Fairly than take over an area membership reminiscent of Angeviolet Hiroshima, the three-time J. League champion determined to start out from scratch with its ladies’s workforce — making it the one WE League participant with no prior legacy or aggressive historical past. Abroad viewers will seemingly acknowledge 37-year-old captain Yukari Kinga, the previous Nadeshiko Japan mainstay with 100 senior caps and taking part in expertise in England, Australia and China.

The place to look at

WE League video games can be proven domestically on streaming service DAZN, with choose fixtures accessible each domestically and internationally on DAZN’s YouTube channel.

In late August, the league established English-language Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Player representatives of the league's 11 cofounders participate in a news conference on Monday. | KYODO
Participant representatives of the league’s 11 cofounders take part in a information convention on Monday. | KYODO

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