On this day ten years ago, the Japan women’s national football team shocked the world by defeating the United States on penalties in the 2011 Women’s World Cup final. Japan, led by their “10” Homare Sawa, was months off from experiencing one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in recorded history when an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident all rocked the country’s northern Tōhoku region. Their success, motivated by grief, loss, and decades of struggle, lives on as one of the most impactful narratives in all of football history.
Homare Sawa lifting the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup trophy / Martin Rose via Getty Images
Japan's women's national football team, formed in 1981, had a quiet first two decades of existence. Like most of the countries of the Asian Football Conference (AFC), Japan struggled to make a name for themselves on the global stage. Following the debut of their women's national team in 1986, China dominated competition in Asia, with victories coinciding with the meteoric rise of football legend Sun Wen. China had a stranglehold on the Asian Football Conference for the entire decade of the 90s, winning seven straight Asian Cup titles. These wins transferred over to the global stage, as China finished silver in the 1996 Olympics and then made a World Cup final in 1999, where they were famously beaten by the United States on penalties.
On the other side of the AFC was Japan, which, in the 90’s, was a country victim of severe economic stagnation. As a result, the country experienced a massive reduction in economic support for women's football, and many of the country's women's club teams in the L. League (now known as the Nadeshiko League) folded. It was at this time that Japan experienced its joint-worst loss of all time, a 9-0 thrashing to the United States. Months later, the USA went on to win the 1999 World Cup. The year after that, the Americans went on to win gold at the 2000 Olympics, a tournament that Japan failed to qualify for through placement in the 1999 World Cup.
After 1999, China's profile faded from view in global women's football, and even started to slip within the AFC. Their seven-straight winning streak of AFC Women’s Asian Cup titles was snapped in 2001 when they lost to North Korea, and since, they have only won one more such title in 2006. AFC teams did very little for the next few World Cup cycles; the best results by any Asian team were reaching the quarterfinals in both 2003 and 2007.
It was the early 2000’s when Japan’s football federation (JFA) were unwilling to properly finance Japan's women’s leagues, and started pushing its female players to explore football outside the country. It is here where Homare Sawa, Japan’s biggest and most beloved icon in women’s football, made a name for herself away from Japan. Prior to this, Sawa had won plenty of titles in Japan’s own Nadeshiko League with Nippon TV Beleza, her first of which dating all the way back to 1991, when she was just thirteen years old.
At first, Sawa was a member of the Denver Diamonds in the USA’s semi-professional USL W-League, but she made her way back to the United States following the 1999 Women’s World Cup to experience the game on a different level. Surrounded by World Cup winners and fans that were eager to see development of the sport, she played in the newly-formed Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), which was the first ever professional women’s football league in the world. Sawa entered the league with the Atlanta Beat, where she stayed for three seasons, learned how the Americans played, and began curating a friendship with the USA players of that era.
24-year-old Homare Sawa with the WUSA's Atlanta Beat in 2002 / Grant Halverson via Getty Images
As indicated by the career histories of many veteran players in Japan’s 2011 Women’s World Cup squad, the JFA’s initiative to push its most talented players out to foreign leagues was successful. Among those emerging players were now-familiar names such as Aya Miyama, Yūki Nagasato, and Rumi Utsugi. This group of young starlets were all led by none other than Sawa, who was in her mid-twenties at the time. Having been a regular with the Japan national team since the early 90s, Sawa emerged after a difficult decade with Japan as a strong but gracious leader, who valued the talent and drive of the players beneath her. It is around this time that Japan’s women’s team adopted the nickname “Nadeshiko,” which doubles as the image of a pink carnation flower and a Japanese term for women representing “ideal” characteristics of kindness, humility, respect, and virtue.
Despite their improving squad, Japan, alongside other AFC teams, didn't manage to make any significant waves in the World Cup competitions of 2003 or 2007. Instead, the South American conference of CONMEBOL made their emergence in the place of the AFC. In 2007, a Brazil side featuring the relatively unknown 20-somethings of Marta, Cristiane, and Formiga took China's 1999 place as World Cup runners-up, embarrassing the USWNT with a 4-0 defeat along the way.
In that same World Cup, Japan's poor trend in major international tournaments persisted, as they were drawn into a group that included England and Germany. Although they had some considerably good results in drawing England 2-2 and losing just 2-0 to Germany, they exited the tournament in the group stage, accumulating four points.
That tournament was hosted in China, a nation with centuries worth of historical conflict with Japan. For each of Japan's three group stage matches they were booed emphatically by the Chinese fans, but at the end of their final match of the group stage against Germany, Japan held up a banner that read "ARIGATO 谢谢 CHINA." The text “ARIGATO” and “谢谢 (xièxiè)” translates to "thank you" in Japanese and Chinese, respectively. Each Japanese player held the banner as they bowed towards the Chinese crowd, who gave them a round of applause.
On a footballing level, Japan were still unable to hold their own against the larger, stronger European giants. But on a purely human level, this Japanese team showed their personality to the world, with a level of appreciation, humility, and respect that is uncharacteristic of competitive sports.
Japan's women's national football team holding up a banner with text that reads "ARIGATO 谢谢 CHINA." (Thank you China!) / Feng Li via Getty Images
With another less-than-ideal result in another major international competition, Japan turned towards the services of Norio Sasaki, the national team’s then-assistant coach and U-20’s coach. Under Sasaki’s guidance, Japan began to make a name for themselves in Asia. Every 2-3 years, the AFC hosts a regional championship called the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) Women's Football Championship, a friendly tournament against the best of the continent. Under newly-appointed Sasaki, Japan came out dominant against every one of its opponents in the 2008 edition of the tournament, topping the table with 9 points from 3 wins. The 2008 EAFF Tournament was the Japan women's national football team's first international title in any tournament. It was a minor win in the grand scheme of things, but it carried some heavy symbolism as the beginning of their story. Japan were suddenly capable of winning, after struggling to gain footing in Asia since their inception. This momentum was not going to stop anytime soon.
In the summer were the 2008 Olympics, hosted in Beijing, which gave the EAFF champions an opportunity to prove themselves to the world on a familiar ground. Japan were faced in the third group with Norway and the United States where they escaped with four points and qualified for the knockouts. In the quarterfinals, the Japanese defeated their historic rivals China by two goals, sending them to the semifinals of a major international tournament for the first time in their history. In the semifinals, the Japanese had their fifth meeting with the United States in a major international tournament. This match was the beginning of a series of back-and-forth classics between the two sides, ending in a 4-2 goalfest that began with the USA conceding first and Japan scoring their second in the last minute of regular time. Japan were beaten by Germany in the bronze-medal match and finished fourth, but despite not medaling, they proved to themselves that they were on the right track to success.
Between the years of 2008 and 2011, Japan won two more minor titles- the 2010 EAFF and the 2010 Asian Games. Although situated mostly in the AFC, the world began to take notice of this budding Japanese side. In 2009, Aya Miyama stood out in the Women’s Professional Soccer league (WPS), and finished as the league’s assist leader with 6. In 2010, Yūki Nagasato became the first ever Asian player to win a UEFA Women's Champions League, doing so with Turbine Potsdam. Most of Japan's other internationals spent 2009 and 2010 in the Nadeshiko League, with league and cup titles being shared between Sawa's Nippon TV Beleza, Kozue Ando’s Urawa Reds, and Nahomi Kawasumi's INAC Kobe Leonessa. As a collective with the national team, they just barely qualified for the 2011 Women’s World Cup, securing a spot by defeating China in the third-place playoffs of the 2010 Women’s AFC Cup.
Four months before the beginning of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, on March 11, 2011, Japan experienced a natural disaster that is now globally known as the Tōhoku earthquake. The earthquake was the largest-magnitude earthquake in the country's history and the fourth-largest since global data collection began in 1900, measuring at a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. Following the earthquake emerged a tsunami, which reached a height of 40 meters (130 feet), and affected 2,000km (~1,400 miles) of the country's coastline. Alongside the tsunami were the destruction and subsequent radioactive leaks of 3 of Japan's nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the worst nuclear accident in the world since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The earthquake had innumerable consequences for the country, and the effects of the event are still seen to this day. From final tallies determined in late 2020, the official number of lives lost that day was 15,899 people, not including 2,527 people missing and assumed dead. Such a number also does not include the people injured or permanently incapacitated, people displaced, or homes and other properties that were completely destroyed. Trillions of yen worth of damage was recorded and the eastern coasts of Japan were littered with millions of tons of debris.
While the country took time to grieve, the less-important aspects of daily Japanese life, such as sport, were cancelled or postponed. Following the earthquake, the Nadeshiko League Cup was cancelled, and the league opener was suspended for a month. One of the league's teams, TEPCO Mareeze, which was based in Fukushima, ceased operations after the earthquake. Their home stadium was converted into a response base for the disaster, and all of their players were forced to find a new team. Among those players were Japanese internationals Karina Maruyama and Aya Sameshima who had worked a second part-time job at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was owned by their club’s sponsor, TEPCO. At the time of the earthquake, they were training in the south of the country, and were only days off from being in the city when the power plant broke down. Soon after the earthquake, Sameshima left the country to play with the Boston Breakers in the United States, as she couldn’t return to her home.
Given everything that had happened in Japan just a few months earlier, the team was determined to play at the 2011 Women's World Cup, not for glory or for the trophy, but for the pride, happiness, and healing of their country. Their plans in doing this were very nearly derailed once they reached the quarterfinal match against the tournament hosts Germany. Germany were easily the best team in the tournament, and were favorites to win it all after going back-to-back in 2003 and 2007.
Prior to the match against Germany, manager Norio Sasaki played footage of Fukushima in the aftermath of the disaster, with the purpose of motivating the Japanese team to play for the people watching them back home. Drowned out by a crowd of thousands of Germans, Japan managed to play their way into extra time against a Birgit Prinz-less Germany. Karina Maruyama, a former employee of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was Japan’s unlikeliest of heroes that night. Maruyama came off the bench at halftime, and in the 108th minute, found herself at the end of a gorgeous chipped through ball from Homare Sawa. She shot straight past Nadine Angerer to the far post to secure Japanese victory, their first ever win against a European team in a competitive match. With this victory, Germany failed to make it past the quarterfinals of a World Cup for the first time since 1999, and Japan were the first Asian team to advance past the quarterfinals since the same year.
Karina Maruyama scoring past Nadine Angerer in the quarterfinals of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup / Scott Heavey via Getty Images
Beating Sweden 3-1 in the semifinals set the Japanese up for the World Cup final, played against the towering force that is the United States women's national soccer team and their manager Pia Sundhage. Going into the match, it seemed like every force was stacked against the Japanese. They had never beaten the United States in a competitive match, and entered the final with 25 straight losses against them.
Additionally, Japan were statistically the smallest team in the tournament, with an average height of 1.62m (~5’4”). The team's collective short stature and low body weights meant that they were forced to play without the physical advantages of their North American and European opponents. If they were unable to play a physical game, the only other direction Japan could go was to play with intelligence. Like they did with Germany and Sweden, Japan's primary game plan was to outsmart the Americans, which they did. Their tight, possession-based style of football contained the American's speed and physicality. The Japanese did what they did with such finesse that they made defeating the top national team in the world look very, very easy.
Every single time the Japanese players passed the ball, it made sense. Every single play was efficient and done with planning and purpose. Every attack, every defensive action, every positioning change, were all so fine-tuned to the point of near perfection. Their style of short, tight, triangular passing most closely resembled the male FC Barcelona sides that were dominating Europe at that same time. It was unlike anything the women's game had ever seen, and it was nothing like the USWNT had ever faced. From any neutral standpoint, the United States were outplayed, through-and-through.
When the United States took their lead through a 69th minute goal from Alex Morgan, Japan scraped a goal right back ten minutes later. A miscommunication between the USA's backline caused a scramble in the box, and Aya Miyama took advantage of a poor clearance from Ali Krieger and another mistake from Rachel Buehler to tie the game 1-1. Japan's goal destroyed the USA's momentum for the rest of regular time.
The final advanced to extra time, where both sides remained goalless in the first fifteen minutes despite a barrage of USA attacks. In minute 106, Abby Wambach broke the record for all-time Women's World Cup goals, scoring her thirteenth from one of her signature headers. The match neared closer and closer to extra time, and Japan saw their window of victory closing as the seconds ticked by… at least until the USA conceded a corner.
Homare Sawa, tightly marked by Rachel Buehler, stood towards the edge of the USA's six-yard box and awaited Aya Miyama’s cross. With her back facing the goal, she ran towards Miyama’s corner service and diverted the ball behind her with the outside of her foot, scoring past Hope Solo from the inner post. Words cannot do this goal justice. Sawa had just scored one of the best, if not the single best goal in a Women's World Cup final. With just three minutes remaining in extra time, Japan’s captain rescued her country’s hopes of a World Cup win, practically eviscerating the chances of the USA being able to muster up yet a third comeback goal.
Homare Sawa's match-tying goal in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final
At the very end of extra time, Azusa Iwashimizu was handed a red card for denying a 1v1 goalscoring opportunity for Alex Morgan. That card and Sawa’s goal secured a penalty shootout for the Japanese, their last chance to shut down the United States once and for all. The USA's mental fragility was put on full display as Shannon Boxx missed her team's first penalty with a weak shot that was saved by Ayumi Kaihori. The USA then missed another through Carli Lloyd, who shot miles over the bar. Nagasato missed her penalty next, which brought slight hopes of a USA comeback into the hands of a young Tobin Heath. Japan's agile keeper stood tall against Heath, who shot a low ball to Kaihori's right, forcing a diving save to keep it out of her net. Sakaguchi's penalty put the Japanese up 2-1, which was just barely allowed in despite Hope Solo getting a touch on it. When Solo stood up, jumped, and flailed her arms in anger after conceding the penalty, it was clear that the Americans were completely mentally beaten. Wambach was the only American to convert her penalty, but it hardly compensated for the disaster of a shootout the Americans had. Her dejected jog back to the USA’s huddle meant it was in Japan’s hands to finish the job.
Japan's final penalty came down to 20-year-old defensive starlet Saki Kumagai, who stood up to the imposing figure of Hope Solo. She shared eye contact with Solo, who was attempting her classic time-wasting penalty tactics, purposefully taking longer than normal to get on her line. Kumagai, unphased, looked up at the scattered Japanese fans who stood holding their breath around the Waldstadion, knowing the joy of her country rested in her hands. A light jog, a hard shot and a top-corner finish far away from Solo's reach was what did it, and the Japanese bench cleared to run towards their heroes Kumagai and Kaihori.
Japan's women's national team running towards Saki Kumagai and Ayumi Kaihori after winning the penalty shootout in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final / Alexandra Beier for FIFA via Getty Images
Japan’s hero Homare Sawa lifted the trophy, as the Japan's women's national football team became the first ever Asian team to win a major international title, regardless of gender. Sawa walked away with the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player, as well as the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer with five goals. Japan also took away the Fair Play award, for accumulation of the least yellow and red cards out of any other team.
After celebrations ended, the Japanese players took their lap around the pitch, thanking their fans and other audience members. Iwashimizu, who was raised in one of the hardest-hit prefectures of Japan’s Tōhoku region, wrote a message on a Japanese flag promising to come visit the citizens of the region and celebrate with them. The team joined together for one final unifying message at the end of their celebrations. Like they had done in every game at the tournament, the defining image from that final is the Japanese squad holding up a large banner reading "To Our Friends Around The World, Thank You For Your Support." Back home in Japan, it was six in the morning when fans were partying in crowded bars and celebrating the victory. All of a sudden, the word around the country was no longer daily reports of death and destruction. The national team’s win was the first piece of good news the country had received in months.
Japan's women's national football team holding a banner with text that reads "To Our Friends Around The World, Thank You For Your Support." / Christof Koepsel via Getty Images
Japan experienced a meteoric rise to fame and respect following their win. Later in the year, Sawa won the FIFA Player of the Year Award, the first Asian player to receive such a title. Norio Sasaki was also awarded best women’s coach, and the JFA was given the annual FIFA Fair Play award. Japan went on to dominate women’s football for the remaining first-half of the 2010s and transformed themselves into global superpowers on par with the USA, Germany, and Brazil. The next year in 2012, the Americans got their revenge with a 2-0 win when the two teams met again in the gold-medal-match of the 2012 London Olympics. Homare Sawa retired from the national team the first time after the tournament at age 33.
Sawa made her return to Japan in 2014, and remained an off-the-bench player as Japan were determined to succeed for the sake of their captain, who was set on it being her final World Cup. In 2015, Japan advanced to their second Women’s World Cup final in two consecutive tournaments, an unprecedented accomplishment. Having not won a World Cup title since 1999, the USA was determined more than ever to take the title away from the team that won in 2011. The resulting final was one of the most memorable women’s football matches of all time, as the USA stormed the pitch with a resounding 5-2 win.
That final was the last major tournament experience that the 2011 “Golden Generation” had together. Sawa's second and final retirement was announced in December of 2015, when she was 37 years old. As of today, she stands as both their all-time most capped player, and their all-time highest goalscorer.
For the most part, the remaining players from Japan’s 2011 squad were phased out after the team failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Just a year off from Sawa making her national team exit, Japan finished in third place in the final stage of Olympic qualification behind Australia and China. Failure to qualify for the tournament was catastrophic and prompted a major overhaul of both players and staff within the Japanese national team.
Aya Miyama and Yūki Nagasato of Japan react after losing 1-2 to China in qualifiers for the 2016 Rio Olympics / Kaz Photography via Getty Images
The first of those to go was Norio Sasaki, who left almost immediately after the qualification tournament was finished. After 8 years of national team management, he stepped down to make way for Asako Takakura. Like Sasaki before her, she formerly managed Japan's youth national teams. Takakura was Japan’s first ever female national team manager, and she still leads the team today.
Many of the players remaining from the 2011 squad retired from the national team within a year following their failure to qualify for the Olympics. Takakura later stated that, although the group was a great one, the national team was ready to begin its transitional phase away from the core that dominated international football between 2008 and 2015. 14 players from the 2011 World Cup winning squad were present for the final round of Olympic qualifying in March of 2016. In 2019, there were only five such players. For the upcoming Olympics, there remain just two.
Saki Kumagai is one of them, who now plays at Bayern Munich after having an illustrious nine seasons as one of Lyon’s core players. Five Champions League titles sit in her trophy cabinet, the first of which was collected through yet another signature Kumagai match-winning penalty. Alongside those titles are six Coupes de France and seven D1 Arkema league titles, culminating in four European trebles. In terms of both individual and team accomplishments, she remains one of the sport's most defining players of the 2010s. Since Aya Miyama’s retirement, she has worn the captain’s band and has commanded the team from the back.
The other such player is Mana Iwabuchi, who was 18 at the time of the 2011 World Cup. Regarded as Sawa’s heir, she has inherited the number 10 for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, and will be the first Olympian to wear Japan's 10 since Sawa in 2012. Takakura has praised her level of maturity and how she has handled her newfound responsibilities as one of the oldest players in Japan’s squad, deeming her worthy of the team’s most important shirt number.
Mana Iwabuchi wearing Japan's number 10 in a pre-Olympics friendly against Australia / Masashi Hara via Getty Imges
Almost every other player within Japan’s national team setup has been a member of their successful youth teams. In 2016, their U-17s were runners-up in the U-17 Women’s World Cup and were defeated by North Korea on penalties. In 2018, that same group of players were upgraded to the country’s U-20 national team, and in the U-20 Women’s World Cup final, they defeated Spain's squad of countless youth prospects with a resounding 3-1 victory. The majority of that squad went on to play as full internationals just a year later in the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Japan wowed global audiences with their quick and efficient style of play that showed glimpses of their predecessors from eight years back. They just barely lost against the Netherlands in the Round of 16 after a very late penalty call, but the eventual tournament runners-up were completely outmatched by, in truth, a group full of kids. Japan had the second-youngest average squad age, 24, out of the 24 national teams at the tournament.
Going into the upcoming 2021 Olympics, Japan will get their second opportunity to show off the talents of their newest crop of youth players. At the back of the squad will stand their captain and decade-tenured veteran Saki Kumagai, the hero of Japan’s penalty shootout in 2011. In the front will be forward Mana Iwabuchi, and Japan’s young players will look to the number 10 on her back to remind themselves of Homare Sawa, the “10” who stole the hearts of the football world 10 years ago.
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Huge thanks to Theresa (@perniIIeharder) for her help with this article!