Mastering adverse conditions was something of a defining characteristic for Tokyo Verdy Beleza, who were crowned WE League champions on Saturday.
Japan’s most successful women’s soccer club added an 18th domestic league trophy to its cabinet this past weekend as it cruised to a 3-0 win over JEF United Chiba Ladies in wet and windy conditions at Nishigaoka in Tokyo’s Kita Ward.
The triumph ends a six-year wait for league success and marks the club’s first title of the professional era. Indeed, the early years of the WE League are denoted as something of a barren era for Beleza. For a team that stocks its ranks almost exclusively with homegrown talent, Beleza have struggled to replenish the holes left by top players such as Yui Hasegawa, Risa Shimizu and Narumi Miura, who each flew the Japanese nest for the big leagues overseas.
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