Japan’s Saki Kumagai: ‘I try to pass the baton to the next generation’ | OneFootball

“Ranking!?” Saki Kumagai says with a laugh. In the afterglow of her team’s Asian Cup triumph in Australia, the veteran Japan defender is asked about where this trophy sits among the many other titles she has won throughout her staggering 17-year career.

But she just smiles and shakes her head. “I never compare my titles,” she says. “Yes, I won some trophies in my career. But this team is from a different generation, so [winning] a trophy in this tournament, that was the really impressive thing for me.

“We couldn’t win four years ago. This national team is a new team and I hope that this makes us more confident and comfortable to play. I don’t know where it ranks, but it means a lot.”

A new team is right. Kumagai, now 35, is the last remaining Japan player who remembers how it felt to lift the Women’s World Cup in 2011, becoming the first – and so far only – Asian nation to do so.

She was just 21 when she started in the final against USA alongside some of football’s greatest ever players: Homare Sawa, Yukari Kinga, Aya Miyama, Nahomi Kawasumi.

Their penalty-shootout victory, in which the young centre-back scored the winner, occurred just four months after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan. Footage of the black water and families scrambling for higher ground was used by the head coach, Norio Sasaki, in Germany to remind the team who, and what, they were playing for.

But those memories are fading as Japan looks towards the future. Maika Hamano, the forward who scored the spectacular winner against Australia in Sydney, was just seven years old when Kumagai thrashed her penalty past Hope Solo. Toko Koga, her centre-back partner throughout this year’s Asian Cup, was five. Riko Ueki, Japan’s top scorer, was 12. Ayaka Yamashita, the best goalkeeper, was 15.

Kumagai is sheepish when asked about her role as a mentor for these young players she now calls teammates: “I didn’t give that much advice to young players. But from my experience, playing in this noise, in big crowds, sometimes we cannot hear our teammates, so I tried to lead the team with how I played.”

She isn’t surprised by their acceleration, though. This generational transition was all part of the plan. In 2005, the Japanese Football Federation announced their 50-year vision for football, with three simple goals: grow the number of participants, improve their national teams’ world rankings and to host – and win – a World Cup.

While the men’s side of the sport has evolved more slowly, the women’s game has rocketed ahead. Roughly halfway through this 50-year plan, Japan sit fifth in the Fifa women’s rankings, having followed their 2011 title with an Olympic silver medal, a second consecutive World Cup final appearance (2015), three Asian Cup trophies (2014, 2018, 2026), and the start of Asia’s first full-time professional women’s league in 2021.

That bigger vision, and the football structures that are aligned beneath it, have now produced a Japan team that’s not just speckled with young stars, but propelled by them.

Kumagai is the last remaining link between the past and the future of Japanese women’s football. Now playing for London City Lionesses in the WSL after successful stints with OL Lyonnes, Bayern Munich, and Roma, Asia’s most decorated female footballer sees what the next decade of this dynasty looks like.

She was once one of them, after all, and as her career winds down, she hopes to pass her own lessons and legacies to a new generation of players who, like those who came before them, will carry Japan back to the summit of the sport.

“We have a lot of good young players,” Kumagai says. “They have a lot of potential, and also a lot of confidence. There are many young players playing in Europe or overseas. They get a lot of playing-time and have good performances over there.

“So, as an experienced player, we try to make [the national team] a good environment for the next generation … I want to build team harmony. I’ve experienced so many things, and while I am a player, I want to share a message or attitude [with] the young players coming into the team. I feel like that is my role: I try to pass the baton to the next generation to show them how to perform in these moments.”

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Header image: [Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images]