Japan National Women’s Futsal Team have started their training camp, the first team activity in this year, in Osaka. They are expected to play in the Women’s Futsal World Tournament to be held in Costa Rica in December this year. In the meeting before the practice, head coach Arihara said to players “Let’s think about what we should do to get ready for the World Tournament. Then first in this camp, let’s start by enjoying playing together.”

After the warmups, they began the practice by juggling the ball with six players in one group. Then the juggling started having each player run to a marker cone after passing the ball to another player in the group. After running around the cone, she had to be back to the group and the juggling. Not only it required the ball control and agility but also smart positioning about where in the circle to get back in order to keep the juggling going. Later, it moved on to passing drills in groups of six. There when passing, they were told to call the name of a player in the group and pass the ball to somebody different at the same time. Lastly, they had scrimmages to wrap up the day.

Comments

ARIHARA Masaaki Head Coach
With the AFC Championship in next May as our ultimate goal, this is the team for the World Women’s Futsal Tournament in Costa Rica in December. We have many young players and those who play on the national team for the first time, but in futsal today where we don’t have generational national teams, it’s a very important mission to gather as many good talents and players with great potential as possible from across the country as well as to win each international match. We will also have a friendly match to play in Kobe on 20 December.
To compete with world-class teams, we have to come up with an answer on how to take advantage of our characteristics as Japanese and build our original style. We will keep challenging for it altogether.

HOTTA Eriko (SAICOLO)
I play with most of the players on this team for the first time. So I will make sure to communicate well with them. I will be aggressive not to lose in every single play, and try to learn as many things as I can. Also I will try to understand the objectives of everything we do, think well about it and perform it.

TAKAO Akari (Maruoka Ruck Ladies)
I was very nervous on this first day of the camp. But I want to learn as many new things as possible by communicating with other players around me. My strength is dribbling, so I will try to show that. I may be the youngest player on the team, but I will do my very best to get closer to my goal.

KOIDE Natsumi (VEEX TOKYO Ladies)
There are many players that I play with for the first time, so we need to communicate a lot, but not only that but also I think it’s very important for everyone to figure out what each player can do for this team. Not only about playing futsal but also about other things, I will try to learn as much as I can in this camp.

SONODA Mizuki (Kyoto Seika Girls High School)
This is my first time to be called up to the national futsal team, and there were some things I didn’t know what to do about. But I practiced with the team and learned how to move and how to put my body in defence which are different from football. I think I could play aggressive defence up front. The transition from defence to offence was a little slow, so I will try to make it faster tomorrow and create more shooting opportunities.

NAKANO Emi (arco-iris KOBE)
I am very excited to come back to the national team after a while. In this camp, there are some veterans, first timers, and also girls who are back to the national team after a while. But we all have our national flag on our kits, so we have responsibility to play with it. We come together as one and make this camp enjoyable. We will work hard and try to come up with answers on how to compete with good teams in the world. We will do everything we can during this short three-day camp.

KITAGAWA Kana (Maruoka Ruck Ladies)
In this three-day camp, I want to show as much as what I can do well and also learn from other players. It’s a short camp, but I will do my best in every single practice session. Not only skills and tactics, I want to learn how to behave off the pitch, too.

Schedule

Japan National Women’s Futsal Team / International Friendly Match

Sat. 20 December 2014
Kickoff 15:00 (plan)
Japan Futsal National Team vs Croatia Futsal National Tem
Kickoff 18:30 (plan)
More information for “International Friendly Match vs Croatia Futsal National Team”