Chelsea are preparing for the International Women's Club Championship in 'women's football-mad' Japan
On the eve of Chelsea Ladies' trip to Japan to make their debut in the International Women's Club Championship (IWCC), their manager, Emma Hayes, has revealed there are more signings to come, in addition to the England defender Laura Bassett and the striker Rachel Williams, for the side that finished second bottom in the FA Women's Super League last season.
Seeking to strengthen the spine of a team that leaked 27 goals in their last campaign, the former Chicago Red Stars manager said: "There may be more signings to come to us. A couple more."
Bassett, who was linked with the new FAWSL club Manchester City before joining Chelsea, said that the new signings were influential in her decision to join Hayes, as well as the manager's vision for the development of the club. "I think the players that will hopefully be announced shortly will make a massive difference on the results compared to last season," said the 30-year-old, who captained Birmingham to their first ever FA Cup win last year – they beat Chelsea on penalties in the final. "It wasn't an easy decision to leave Birmingham, I was speaking to other clubs as well, but Emma and her staff are so passionate and ambitious, they have a real clear vision of where they want to go and how they're going to get there. I just got caught up in it."
In Japan, where Chelsea will enter at the semi-final stage next Wednesday to take on either the Australian league winners, Sydney, or the Japanese runners-up, NTV Beleza, the central focus will undoubtedly be on the Blues striker Yuki Ogimi – a 2011 World Cup winner with Japan and 2012 Olympic silver medallist, who is currently shortlisted for Fifa's World Player of the Year award.
"They're women's football mad in Japan," said Hayes, who explained that Japan's World Cup win came just three months after the devastating tsunami that hit the country. "Yuki says it just exploded after that. It just filled the hearts and minds of the Japanese public." Japanese media organised a press conference solely to announce that Ogimi would captain Chelsea in the tournament. "You can't go anywhere without 20-30 journalists mobbing you there, it's nutty," said Hayes. "Going over there with an American team last year, we never even saw the [US World Cup winners] 1999 generation get treated like that over in the US. We couldn't believe the adulation, it was mind-blowing. It's fabulous. It's a cult following. Their top club team, INAC Kobe Leonessa, average anywhere between 12-20,000 for a home game."
The IWCC, also known as the Mobcast Cup and organised for the first time last year by the Japan Football Association and Japanese Women's Football League, is being touted to Fifa officials as a women's equivalent to the Fifa Club World Cup. The top sides from around the world will descend on Okayama, Kagoshima and Tokyo for the second edition of the Cup, with Chelsea facing either Japanese Cup and League winners Kobe Leonessa or the South American side Colo-Colo should they progress to the final.
With the Champions League winners Wolfsburg having turned down the opportunity to travel to Japan, Hayes jumped at the chance to participate in a tournament that also ties in with Chelsea's Asia marketing plans. "I think the club are keen for the women to be involved in Japan because we have a female star so to penetrate that market makes it easier if you have a player. It makes sense for us to be invested there."
Hayes views the tournament as a good opportunity for her new signings to bed into the team ahead of pre-season training in the new year, and is unrepentant about poor results in the last campaign. "We've just been concentrating on getting it right behind the scenes," says Hayes, who insists she had to implement a new infrastructure to enable the club to move forward. "For me last season was a massive success off the pitch. We progressed players from our centre of excellence – we finished the season with five centre of excellence players in our line-up, which is a sign of how far we've come. I'm a big fan of player development and developing my own players. Our project is different to City and Liverpool, we're not trying to buy instant success. We want to develop it."
via Football: Chelsea | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/nov/29/chelsea-ladies-japan-iwcc-reception
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