TOKYO: Women’s football in Asia can near the distance on Europe and North America with this week’s launch of the AFC Women’s Champions League, say gamers from top Japanese side Urawa Reds Ladies. The women’s recreation has exploded in reputation in Europe in current years, with clubs in England, Spain and Germany playing record attendances and funding. Women’s football in North America is likewise in impolite health but Asia has fallen behind considering that Japan became the continent’s first and best World Cup winners in 2011. Asian soccer chiefs are aiming to provide the women’s club sport a shot within the arm while the Champions League kicks off on Thursday. Urawa received an invitational continental competition that served as a check occasion final season, and defender Yu Endo has her points of interest set on this yr’s name. “Compared to Europe, women’s soccer in Asia isn’t always as installed but and compared to the USA, there are much less gamers,” she informed AFP. “I think having a large tournament like this will suggest more people popping out to watch games and helping to set up ladies’s soccer. “If Urawa Reds win the Asian title, I suppose human beings around the world will take greater hobby in ladies’s soccer in Japan,” she delivered. The competition features 12 groups from across the Asian Football Confederation region, although East Asia is extra closely represented. Organisers say the winning team “can anticipate as a minimum $1.Three million in prize money”. Endo says monetary incentives supply “motivation” to players whose salaries are dwarfed by means of those in their male counterparts. But she also desires to make history because the tournament’s first champions. “I want Urawa Reds to be the team that takes at the rest of the arena representing Asia,” she said. Last season’s invitational competition saw Urawa beat South Korea’s Incheon Hyundai Steel Red Angels 2-1 in May, in a very last which nearly did now not take place. The AFC informed the teams in March that the very last could be scrapped, without a official purpose made public. The recreation eventually went beforehand after a past due U-flip however Urawa’s Rion Ishikawa said it become a tough enjoy for the gamers. “We performed the organization stage and we had been aiming to win the name, so we had nowhere to take away that frustration,” said Ishikawa, a Japan international who has performed on the World Cup and Olympics. “Eventually we had been capable of host the match and we felt we truely needed to win it.” The AFC say the Champions League will usher in “a brand new dawn for the girls’s recreation in Asia”. The tournament starts with 3 organizations of 4 teams playing in centralised places, before shifting to a knockout competition from the region-finals. The final is set to take place in past due May next 12 months. Ishikawa says that, for Urawa, “the goal is to end up champions of Asia”. “The Champions League institution degree comes when we are nevertheless in our domestic league season however we want to reveal what a robust team we are,” she said. “We need to come to be a bigger team on the arena level and triumphing the Asian Champions League could help that.”
