Japan has always been a powerhouse in the global women’s game, with the Asian nation producing some outstanding talent over the years, and they remain the only country from their continent to get their hands on the Women’s World Cup trophy (having achieved that feat back in 2011).
Central to that has been the strength of their domestic pyramid, with their top-flight (the WE League) regarded particularly highly and responsible for launching the careers of several world stars, including Roma Femminile duo Saki Kumagai and Moeka Minami, Manchester City Women’s Yui Hasegawa and retired former Aston Villa Women and Arsenal Women midfielder Mana Iwabuchi.
As a result, there is always a great deal of excitement and anticipation whenever a new season gets underway, and the 2023/24 campaign has not disappointed in that regard. There have been individual and team performances aplenty to savour, and one team that has really caught the eye has been Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies. The Saitama-based side have been the team to beat for a period of time now, and their recently acquired second consecutive league title was well-deserved, giving them two reasons to celebrate after also lifting the AFC Women’s Club Championship trophy at the weekend for the first time, having seen off South Korean champions Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels Women in the final.
With that in mind, this tactical analysis will take a closer look at Urawa’s game plan to see why Naoki Kusunose’s side have been such formidable opponents, with it clear that they are a force to be reckoned with in any competition that they enter. The analysis will break down the tactics that have been present in so much of their play and will shine a light on the players who have been instrumental in making the current season one to remember.
Positional flexibility
Japanese tactics have long been based on teams retaining possession for extended periods of play and moving the ball around the pitch at a continual speed. It is clear when watching Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies that they, too, want to play at a high tempo and control the flow of their matches.
However, whilst they are more than happy to make the ball do the work, there is a key demand for player to also move around the field, with a lot of their build-up play characterised by constant positional alterations.
This is something that every player in the team has really bought into as the campaign has gone on, none more so than the two full-backs, Yu Endo and Yuki Mizutani. Both have constantly been seen moving up the field whenever Urawa have had possession and acting as additional midfielders, and that has then allowed Urawa to push more numbers into the final third and so gives them a greater chance of making their opportunities count.
What is important to note, though, is that both players don’t move forward at the same time, with the risk of doing so being that the two centre-backs are left too exposed should possession be lost. As a result, one moves forward, and the other stays back, which then allows Urawa to both support attacks but also leave themselves with enough protection behind to stave off the threat of counterattacks. In this case, it is Endo who has made the move forward, with her recognising the long clearance up the field made by Cerezo Osaka Yanmar Ladies defender Riko Tsutsui and moving to intercept the ball before it can be met by any of the opposing team’s players.
Up until this point, she has only done what most others in her position would have done, but where things become interesting is that Endo then doesn’t move back out towards the wing and instead continues to advance in the same inverted manner. As a result, she has gone from being a right-sided defender to a central playmaker in an instant, and that is where the positional flexibility is shown clearly.
In this situation, her pass into midfielder Yuzuho Shiokoshi then allows star forward Kiko Seike to try her luck in front of goal, and the fact that Urawa have been averaging 2.4 goals per game and have averaged 55.9% possession per match owes a lot to rotations like this taking place.
For some players, this ability to drift between roles is a quality that needs to be developed, but for others, it comes more naturally, and one who has always thrived at it is the aforementioned Shiokoshi. Mainly operating in the advanced midfield role, she has largely been Urawa’s creator-in-chief when the ball does access spaces higher up the field, as was clear to see in the last example when she made the final pass that set up the goalscoring opportunity.
With nine assists to her name and a 72.6% individual passing accuracy, there is no denying that she has not been a vital piece in Kusunose’s jigsaw, and what has helped her to be so efficient has been the understanding that has developed between her and Seike.
It is a partnership that has been one of the main reasons for the latter being the league’s current top scorer, with 17 goals accrued to date, and their connection has almost been telepathic at times. In this case, for example, Shiokoshi has moved to get on the ball between the Mynavi Sendai Ladies players and has not once looked ahead of her to see where Seike is positioned, and instead simply sends the ball forward knowing that the former will be there. Sure enough, Seike has recognised where the pass will end up here and ends up exploiting the gap that has emerged ahead of her in the defensive line.
Whilst Shiokoshi has featured in the past for the national team, she has never been a regular in Futoshi Ikeda’s squads, and that has surprised a few people given the obvious quality that she oozes. Her last involvement in any national team was during the 2022 Asian Games (which took place at the end of 2023), when she featured as part of the B team that travelled to Hangzhou, China, and she demonstrated there why she is a player that some would like to see involved more often in the senior squad, with four goals and two assists in their five matches.
However, whilst the importance of Shiokoshi is clear for all to see when it comes to operating in different areas of the field, there is one player who really epitomises this aspect of their play. Typically used as a left winger, Miki Ito has been seen both cutting inside and staying in wider spaces as the season has progressed, and her ability to adapt to different match circumstances has led to her becoming an invaluable member of the squad.
Her heatmap provides a clear indication of the variety of options that she brings to the table, with her mainly staying wide but also capable of drifting infield and of frequenting the central areas too, and she has been seen shooting at goal from inside the goal area and from other spaces further out. However, when the likes of Hikaru Naomoto have been in the starting XI, she has needed to adapt and to focus on playing a supporting role, with her role then being to stretch the opponents out horizontally and to ensure that key attacking threats in the middle have an abundance of time and space in which to operate at their best.
Therefore, when it comes to players moving between positions and demonstrating flexibility, there are few that show it better than her.
Rapid transitions
As mentioned earlier in the scout report, Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies do not rely solely on this to move the ball around the pitch. They are just as happy to make the ball do the work, with fast transitions and speedy passes just as prominent a feature of their play.
Once again, this involves the whole team working together, and that starts from the back for Kusunose’s side. Their desire to play out from the back is a key aspect of their build-up play, and the defensive line is tasked with moving the ball into areas from which it can then be sent into dangerous positions.
What makes this possible is the positioning of the full-backs, who once again show their tendency to push up the field whenever Urawa are in possession, with Endo doing just that here as she looks to position herself just beyond the halfway line. By taking up this role, she allows Urawa to gain a significant amount of territory with one pass, which then makes the chance of the transition ending in a shot on goal a high one due to several Sendai players being taken out of the game and spaces ahead of the ball being more plentiful.
On this occasion, the ball only takes a few seconds to travel from the feet of centre-back Rion Ishikawa to the final third, with another shot on goal the result. The fact that Urawa as a team have registered an 80% passing accuracy so far shows how they rarely give the ball away whenever they are going from one end of the field to the other.
There are times when the ball cannot be moved up the field with that level of speed, as is the case here when Sendai have got players back, so space is at a premium. However, this doesn’t worry Uwara, and instead, they simply ensure that they never give their opponents a chance to isolate any individual player and to win the ball in a cheap manner, with it travelling from Mei Shimada to Shiokoshi to Seike and then into the path of the advancing Endo here without ever really slowing down.
This again highlights the adaptability that has been rife in Uwara’s play. They do not look to overcomplicate matters and instead focus on executing the basics correctly, which has led to multiphase situations like this, also leading to shots on goal.
The fact that it came from their right-back is also important to point out, with it once again linking back to the way that transitions start at the back for Uwara and involve the whole team. The fact that Endo has scored three goals and provided four assists during the 23/24 campaign to date shows that this is not the only time that she has been seen offering the final passing option.
Having different ways of moving the ball forward in transition has allowed Urawa to play through their opponents in tight spaces as well as when the pitch is more open, which is shown clearly here as the ball has been passed by Endo into the feet of Shimada and Osaka have worked hard to get four players around her in a bid to force her into conceding possession.
However, the fact that Shimada, like every Uwara player, is really good with her feet and decisive when she is in control of the ball means that she doesn’t lose her composure and instead simply takes one touch to stop the ball and another to send it forward, with Seike making a run into the space that Osaka have left unguarded behind them and giving her team a way of turning what looked like a potentially tricky situation into one that could prove to be advantageous for them.
Again, the same ideas that have been present in this section of the scout report are clear to see, with players working in unison and moving the ball between the lines at speed, and that shows another reason that they have been so effective in possession and have been so difficult for opponents to manage.
Defensive tactics
It should be pointed out though that Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies have not only had cohesive tactical principles to rely on when in attack, with there also being clear ideas on show when they are defending too, and this side of the game has been equally crucial in seeing them become one of Asia’s most dominant sides.
The first thing to point out is that, much as their attacks start from the back, defending begins at the front, with those in the forward and midfield areas asked to combine whenever the ball has been lost and to press high up the field in order to regain it at the earliest available opportunity.
What is noticeable about this, though, is that their pressing is carried out in a very controlled manner, with players taking it in turns to push up the field and therefore implementing continued pressure rather than one that is over within a few seconds. There are also clear indications that players choose when to trigger the press, hold their positions, and simply track the ball as their opponents move it around the pitch. Both of these are shown here as Nagano Parceiro Ladies goalkeeper Mao Umemura was able to send the ball out to defender Suguri Hashitani without being put under any significant pressure.
However, as soon as Hashitani turned and looked for someone to move the ball to here, Uwara sprung into action and moved forward in turn to force their opponents into passing at a quicker speed than they would have liked to, with Naomoto closing Hashitani down here. Right-back Kurumi Iwashita then being targeted by opposite number Ito as soon as she had received the ball.
Uwara’s aim in these situations is always to force the ball to be turned over in a cheap manner and early on in their opponents’ build-up play, and they didn’t have to wait long here as the pass back inside the field from Iwashita lacked accuracy and was therefore intercepted before it could reach Hinako Suzuki. With Urawa making a total of 374 high regains, 629 counterpressing recoveries and 166 dangerous recoveries (those that have led to a shot on goal within 20 seconds of the ball being regained) in the current league season, there is no doubt that this has been a hugely effective part of their overall defensive strategy.
However, what Kusunose’s team also recognise is that pressing in this manner is not always an option, with there being times when their opponents are too quick for them and access their own third before they can set up their shape and look to move towards the ball. As a result, there have been some situations when they have needed to sit back more and to focus on protecting their goal area, as has happened here due to Sanfrecce Hiroshima Regina making their way up the pitch and getting into a position from which they can deliver the ball into the goal area.
Hiroshima winger Yoshino Nakashima was set to move the ball in quickly rather than waiting too long, but she has been prevented from doing so by Endo closing her down and forcing her to hold onto it for a little longer than she would have liked to. This is a vital thing for the Uwara player to do here because they had not got enough players back to deal with the double central threat posed by Hanano Koga and Mami Ueno, and so, had the ball been sent in when Nakashima had wanted to, the chances are that a goal would have come about.
However, because that early cross was prevented, Nakashima was then forced to adapt her cross and to target the space between her teammates and the goal instead, with both players now being tightly marked. So, any aerial pass into their vicinity would have likely been cleared. As a result, a chance that had initially looked dangerous was neutralised, with the ball falling well for goalkeeper Sakiko Ikeda to come out and gather at her own leisure. With them winning 72.7% of their defensive duels and conceding just 0.72 times this season, it is clear that this is another part of Uwara’s game plan that has contributed to their positive campaign.
No team is entirely infallible, though, and Urawa, like any side, do have moments when they make it too easy for their opponents to break them down. This has largely come when teams have tried to use their tactics against them, with INAC Kobe Leonessa sending the ball directly up the field from defender Hinata Ide here and targeting striker Mina Tanaka, and this has led to both Mizutani and Reina Nagashima instinctively moving across to close her down in the same way as Endo did against Hiroshima.
However, this was simply a ploy to take players out of the game and to create a space further inside the pitch that Kobe could use to their advantage, with Tanaka having no intention of doing anything here and the ball being passed back towards right wing-back Miyabi Moriya instead, with her then running inside the Japan striker and into the gap that had been created. On this occasion, Urawa were let off as the chance didn’t lead to anything, but the fact that Kobe are not the only side to have fashioned spaces in this way shows that it is something that Kusunose and his players will need to keep an eye on moving forwards.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this tactical analysis has looked in detail at Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies, highlighting the different parts of their game that have helped them to be such a ferocious opponent and showing why they are one of Asia’s strongest club sides at this moment in time.
As has been made clear throughout the analysis, so much of what Urawa do well in and out of possession has come down to their ability to work in unity with each other and to execute the different aspects of their play with quality and clarity. There is certainly a lot to like about the brand of football that they have been implementing over the last period of time and the honours that it has provided them with.
The season is not yet over for Kusunose’s side, and there are still two WE League matches that they need to get through before they can really get the celebrations underway, with a trip to Kobe followed by a home match against NTV Tokyo Verdy Beleza. However, with neither result having any bearing on their season due to the title already being wrapped up, they can be forgiven for having an eye on next season and on planning for the challenge of competing for a third straight top-flight title. They are certainly on an upward trajectory on the evidence of the last two seasons, and it will be interesting to see just how far they can go.
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