Nobuhito Toriizuka at Cerezo Osaka 2023/24: The fundamental defensive principles guiding WE League’s youngest team – tactical analysis

We’re currently six games into the 2023/24 WE League season — Japan’s top-tier Women’s Football division. This season sees Cerezo Osaka enter WE League for the very first time, having been competing in the semi-professional Nadeshiko League prior to the current campaign.

Six games into the season, Osaka sit seventh out of 12 teams, having picked up seven points (two wins and a draw) from their fixtures thus far. This is not a bad return for the Nobuhito Toriizuka-led side in their first WE League season, especially when you consider that Cerezo Osaka have the youngest squad in their division, with an average squad age of just 21.5.

Toriizuka’s side have conceded eight goals so far this term — the fourth-highest amount in the league; however, they’ve got the second-lowest xGA in the division along with the lowest xGA per shot at 0.077, which shines a more positive light on their overall defensive performances.

While they sit seventh on the table, their expected points (xPTS) tally sees them in fifth, again providing some encouragement for the young squad based on the underlying numbers indicating the quality of chances created and chances conceded sees them performing even better than they the actual numbers would suggest relative to their competition.

This tactical analysis piece will provide some analysis of how Toriizuka has set his side up out of possession this term and how these defensive tactics have been crucial to his side’s positive first-ever six games in WE League.

Goalkeeper’s performance

Rina Yamashita has been Cerezo Osaka’s number one this term. According to Wyscout, she’s largely delivered in line with the expected numbers, though as per figure 1, she’s marginally underperformed as a shot-stopper, though not to a drastic extent. Still, we’d say her overall shot-stopping performances have been something of a mixed bag.

From observing her between the sticks for Cerezo Osaka, we would be remiss to ignore the fact that she has committed several poor errors that have led to her team conceding a preventable goal — we must bear this in mind when judging the numbers on the viz above, as the numbers alone don’t tell the whole picture.

Again, as mentioned earlier, per Wyscout, Osaka have got the second-lowest xGA in WE League for 2023/24 right now but have conceded the fourth-most goals. This is partly a result of the ‘keeper’s poorer errors.