As Naho, me and Japanese fans started to deliver a voice of criticism to the Twitter account for the federation, they started to do a little bit better job than before we spoke out. But this is not good enough even now it's available to watch the game on YouTube. Of course the core fans will watch this, but probably not many people would recognize this game was played. That's why LIVE streaming is super important for any sport.
The federation uploaded Full- Match video on their YouTube after 5 days the game was played. Even if you watch this game on their YouTube, there is no commentator, no picture/name of the starting eleven, no details about the team and player to get to know. There is no information other than just the game being played.
Since we knew there is no live broadcasting and streaming, Naho did live tweeting the other days for both 2 matches against Brazil and USA instead of the federation supposed to do.
She should not have done this job, but what she did was delivered to the world as a message to the federation what they are supposed to do if they know that there is no broadcasting.
Well, they FINALLY did live tweeting for the last game against Canada. Now you see that they are capable of doing that, but they didn't before.
We think that the lack of broadcast this time for the She Believes Cup is due to the fact that the federation has not done anything for 12 years to maintain or improve to make our value and also the abilities to compete at the world stage. We’ve been seeing lack of promoting our game, and lack of setting up matches in Japan even though WE WON THE WORLD CUP.
We don’t want you to misunderstand, this is not only this time problem. Lack of many things has been building up, and this is the result of what they’ve done for us.
After winning the World Cup, we always played with a sense of urgency that our popularity would not last long unless we continue to be able to compete at the world stage. Because We knew the nature of the Japanese very well, and we knew that if we didn't keep winning, we would get less media coverage. And we were feeling a lack of support from the federation.
Lots of media covered us during that time between 2011-2015, it was on the TV news often, so the federation didn’t even need to work harder for promoting in earnest. Because lots of people generally wanted to watch our game, and "Nadeshiko" was popular, so they could get enough views. But they didn't set up enough games in Japan or any match they could make on FIFA day.
This is the issue that we haven’t played enough games in Japan as once world champion but also in general as well, and people should watch us through the TV most of time because we’ve played a lots outside of country.
Firstly, it is not okay to have not enough games in Japan, but we couldn’t ask the federation for better and more opportunities to play. We've thought that we should’ve had more games against the quality of the team specially in Japan. We couldn’t speak loud because we were afraid of it. And unfortunately it gradually has been getting worse.
And then the federation’s direction was changed and they suddenly cut off the majority of experienced and well-known players after we lost the qualification tournament for Rio Olympic 2016. And they started building up a completely different team/organization than before. Since then it has not gotten as much recognition/attention as well as we used to have.
Our Achievement for the past 12 years
So, Let’s have a look at what we've achieved since 2011.
Algarve Cup 2011 : 3rd Place
FIFA World Cup 2011 : Champion
Qualification Tournament for London Olympic 2012 : 1st place/6
Algarve Cup 2012 : 2nd place/12
London Olympic Games 2012 : 2nd place
Algarve Cup 2013 : 5th place/12
Algarve Cup 2014 : 2nd place/12
Asian Cup 2014 : Champion
Algarve Cup 2015 : 9th place/12
FIFA World Cup 2015 : 2nd place
Qualification Tournament for Rio Olympic 2016 : 3rd place/6 (not qualified)
Changed Head Coach
Algarve Cup 2017 : 6th place/12
Tournament of nation 2017 : 3rd Place/4
Tournament of nation 2018 : 4th place/4
Asian Cup 2018 : Champion
She believes cup 2019 : 3rd place/4
FIFA World Cup 2019 : Lost in the first game of the knockout stage.
She Believes Cup 2020 : 4th place/4
Tokyo Olympic Games 2021 : Lost in the first game of the knockout stage
Changed head coach
Asian Cup 2022 : 3rd place
She believes Cup 2023 : 2nd place
It’s not easy to build up a team like to be able to be competitive at the world stage consistently. Especially playing a game against a team in top 10 for the FIFA rank. We became competitive after many years, and we can say that we could've stayed there for 4-5 years.
Slowly we’ve dropped down (not getting the results consistently) but other countries are getting better too, it’s hard to analyze between these two, but we will say that the federation definitely could have managed better because we've had lots of possibilities to compete for the World Stage.
That's why it’s super necessary to make value as a content which we continue to get attention from fans and to get them feeling that to be willing to support. And to provide and extend that opportunity for people who want to watch the game as well.
Women’s sports always have lower media coverage and lower attendance than men’s sports in Japan. Of course it’s related to the performance on the field and the effort off the field. But do people get enough opportunities for getting to know about their attractiveness? And are we able to manage that without depending on the result? If the team plays an attractive game, there are people who still want to watch the game.
The management of setting up more playing game opportunities and getting media coverage should not be depending on the result.
But from my understanding, the national team should aim to win all the time. There is no such game that it’s ok to lose. And the federation should support players to maximize the possibility to win with all the cost they have. To give them enough opportunity to play in front of fans. The players should be selected by right evaluation for that.
And to make the players feel proud of representing the country, to make them feel that they have responsibility for the next generation, and to make understanding what the role has for the national team player. Typically this should transfer from generation to generation which is our understanding. And the federation should treat the players like that. And they should know that the national team’s successes have a big impact on kids, the younger generation, and the domestic league.
Players should show how valuable they are on the field. And the federation should extend their value to people in the world.
This is the very minimum standard that the federation and players are supposed to be.
796 the lowest, 22,048 the highest
Let’s look at the attendance and how many games we've had yearly for the past 12 years.
We thought that We generally have not had enough home games and we travel a lot for the international games. We’ve not had good enough games for building up the team and preparation for any big tournament, but we didn’t make excuses and we tried our best.
We always wanted to play in front of our fans, but there were very few opportunities to get it… and the attendance was not even quite high after winning the World Cup, furthermore it dropped down since 2016 and never came back to over 10,000 attendance.
In 2009, it was crazy that we had only 3 international games for the entire year.
In 2011, we had only one home game against South Korea before winning the world cup. It was 4,202 attendance.
And we didn’t have any games in Japan after winning the World Cup. This is definitely a lack of promotion and the federation just wasted the opportunity.
In 2012, we had only 3 home games against the USA, Brazil and Australia before the London Olympic Games. And also we didn’t have any games in Japan after we got the silver medal. Same as the previous year what the federation did.
15,159 USA
12,862 Brazil
22,048 Australia (before men’s game)
In 2013, we had only 3 home games against New Zealand, Nigeria twice.
8,881 New Zealand
15,206 Nigeria
10,174 Nigeria
In 2014, we had only two home games against New Zealand and Ghana.
6,685 New Zealand
12,288 Ghana
In 2015, we had only 2 home games, against New Zealand and Italy. It was before the World Cup. And also we didn’t have any games in Japan after finishing 2nd place for the WC. The federation did the same thing again. And We only had one game in the Netherlands in November which was the last test match for the Rio Qualification tournament.
14,154 Mew Zealand
14,453 Italy
In Feb.2016, we had a Rio qualification tournament in Japan and it was 5 games in 10 days.
4,988 Australia
5,605 South Korea
6,959 China
3,418 Vietnam
4,766 North Korea
In 2017, there were 5 games in Japan including the East Asian tournament.
8,824 Costa Rica
6,261 Swiss
3,000 South Korea
3,000 China
5,000 North Korea
In 2018, there were only two home games
6,782 Ghana
6,185 Norway
In 2019, there was no home game before the World Cup. After the World Cup they had two home games against Canada and South Africa.
8,123 Canada
8,453 South Africa
there was also East Asian tournament after the World Cup and the total attendance for 6 games included other teams game was 8,193 (average was 1,366 per game)
In 2021, there were the most home games for a friendly ever, which is 5 games against Paraguay, Panama, Ukraine, Mexico, Australia. And all before the Olympic Games in Tokyo. But most of the games were not competitive.
818 Paraguay
4,036 Panama
796 Ukraine
3,890 Mexico
2,584 Australia
In 2022. There were 3 games for the East Asian Tournament in Japan and two friendly games against Nigeria and New Zealand.
2,221 South Korea
1,051 Chinese Taipei
901 China
1,671 Nigeria
4,110 New Zealand
FYI : The highest ever attendance was 31,324 in 2004 when we played against North Korea and beat them for the first time ever and qualified for the Athene Olympic Game.
As you see these numbers, you can tell that we’ve not had enough games in Japan, and the attendance keeps staying lower. Even though our population is not as large as the US, they could've done something different for sure.
We don't think this is what a world champion should be. And We believe that we should not be treated like this.
We were in the place where our standard as World Champion should’ve pulled up the standard for other countries of federation so the federation should’ve taken the responsibility heavily but they didn't. This is not okay for us, but also this is not okay for the women's football world.