2023-07-19 19:05:51
Since the 2011 World Cup in Germany, Nadeshiko Japan has been far from winning a major international tournament.
The results of this tournament have important implications in terms of increasing the number of players playing women’s soccer and improving its popularity.
According to the Japan Football Association, in 2011, when Japan won the German tournament, there were 26,237 junior high school and older female players registered with the association.
Two years later, in 2013, the number was 30,243, surpassing 30,000 for the first time.
However, the number of registrations has been sluggish since the peak, and last year it was 27,906, which is regarding 2,000 less than the peak.
Norio Sasaki, who was the winning coach of the German tournament and is currently the head of the Japan Football Association Women’s Committee, said, “I want Japanese children to have dreams by achieving results in this tournament.” It is positioned as an important competition in terms of dissemination.
In addition, the number of spectators in the domestic league was sluggish, and in 2011, the Nadeshiko League, which gained attention following Japan won the World Cup, was the INAC where many members of “Nadeshiko Japan” such as Homare Sawa, the captain at the time, were enrolled. A lot of customers gathered for the game of Kobe Leonessa.
The August 6, 2011 match saw a league record attendance of 24,546 people, and the league’s overall average attendance in 2011 was 2,796, roughly triple the previous year’s attendance.
However, the downward trend continued from the next season, and although the WE League, Japan’s first professional women’s league, which was launched two years ago, aimed to attract an average of 5,000 spectators, the number of spectators was 1,560 in the first season and 1,401 in the current season. We have fallen well short of our target and the situation continues to be tough.
In order to regain the popularity of women’s soccer in Japan, Nadeshiko Japan is required to make a breakthrough in the World Cup.
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