AFC star Saki Kumagai has brought World Cup and Champions League winning mentality to Asian women’s football
- World Cup and Champions League winner Kumagai encouraged by women’s football development in the region
- ‘There’s a possibility for that in the future’, she says of being first Asian to win Ballon d’Or Feminin
Newly crowned 2019 AFC women's player of the year Saki Kumagai is likely to require a trophy cabinet-extension if she continues to revolutionise Asian women's football in the way she has.
The 29-year-old defender is a Fifa World Cup winner, Asian Cup champion and Olympic silver medallist with Japan; four-time Uefa Champions League winner and six-time league champion with Olympique Lyonnais; and was nominated for this year's BBC women's footballer of the year award – losing out to Lyon roommate and Champions League record goalscorer Ada Hegerberg.
Then aged just 20, Kumagai was picked to take Japan's decisive penalty in the 2011 World Cup final penalty shootout against world number one the US. She scored, helping Japan to a historic win.
Japan were runners up at the 2015 World Cup, demonstrating to the rest of the world that it was certainly no fluke. Side note: Kumagai also scored Lyon's winning penalty at the 2016 Champions League final.
The Sapporo native has since earned 108 national caps and led a youthful Nadeshiko Japan during the 2019 World Cup in France. As one of only four players in coach Asako Takakura's squad with over a century of caps, the pressure was on to command her fresh-faced peers at the sport's biggest tournament.
