Asian football champions Japan need ‘different tools’ to win the Women’s World Cup, says coach
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Yui Hasegawa lifting the trophy as Japan celebrate winning the Women’s Asian Cup after beating hosts Australia 1-0 in the final at Stadium Australia in Sydney on March 21, 2026.
PHOTO: EPA
TOKYO – Coach Nils Nielsen warned on March 23 that Japan need “different tools” to win the 2027 Women’s World Cup after sweeping to the Asian title with a series of barnstorming performances.
Japan beat Women’s Asian Cup hosts Australia 1-0 in the final in Sydney on March 21 to lift the trophy for the third time in four tournaments.
Nielsen’s side dazzled along the way, scoring 29 goals and conceding just one to lay down a marker ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.
Japan are the only Asian team to have won the world title and Nielsen said they would need to keep improving if they want to do it again.
“We found some parts of ourselves that are really strong,” the Greenlander said, after returning to Tokyo. “There are also elements that we saw, we had some difficulty getting the final to be on our terms because of the opponent’s strength.
“We will see that again at the World Cup, that means we need to find some different tools how to get the game to be the way we want it.”
Japan won the Women’s World Cup in 2011 and reached the final again four years later, losing to the United States.
They have not gone past the quarter-finals at the World Cup or Olympics since.
Nielsen’s squad in Australia featured 16 England-based players, including captain Yui Hasegawa and forward Maika Hamano, who scored a spectacular winner in the final.
The coach said his team had “grown a lot together already and that’s not going to stop”.
“You need to grow more, you need to constantly be moving,” said Nielsen. “If you are satisfied and accept status quo, you’re not going to be good enough in the end.”
Japan’s win capped off a landmark tournament with more than 350,000 fans through the turnstiles, reinforcing the growth in popularity of women’s football.
This was around six times as many as the previous record set in 2010 in China, with the 74,397 fans at the Sydney final setting a new attendance mark for a single game in tournament history.
There was palpably less excitement in Japan, with the final not being shown on terrestrial TV and a muted media reaction to the team’s win.
Nielsen urged Japanese media companies to provide more coverage, saying “you will get your value back if you do because they are worth following”.
“We are not at the same place as they are in Europe and around the world,” he said. “We are competing with other sports that are very popular.” AFP
