is a Japanese

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player. She currently plays as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

for Japanese

WE League The , officially the , also known as the for sponsorship reasons, is the top flight of women's association football in Japan, starting from the 2021–22 season. It is the first fully-professional women's soccer league in Japan. History On 3 J ...

club

Omiya Ardija Ventus is a Japanese women's association football team which plays in WE League. and become the women's section of J. League club Omiya Ardija. History The team started in 1996 as an old girls' club for students of Jumonji Middle School in Toshima Wa ...

. She played for Japan at the 2010 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup and the 2012 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, winning silver at the former and bronze at the latter.

Career

Influenced by her father, a football coach, she started playing football at the age of 6. In elementary school she joined the strongest club in her prefecture, Fortuna SC. In junior high school, she competed for Japan at the U-15 level. At the U-17 level, she contributed to Japan's second place at the U-17 Women's World Cup, held in Trinidad at Tobago in 2010. In the spring of 2012, at the age of 18, she joined

INAC Kobe Leonessa INAC Kobe is a Japanese football club from Kobe, founded in 2001. INAC stands for International Athletic Club while Leonessa means Lioness in Italian. In 2006 INAC Leonessa was promoted to the Nadeshiko.League, where it has played since 2020. ...

. She was a member of the Japanese team that won the bronze medal at the 2012 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup.

Popularity and fan following

For years Ayu Nakada has been a hot topic in Japan, attracting much attention for her looks (

cuteness Cuteness is a subjective term describing a type of attractiveness commonly associated with youth and appearance, as well as a scientific concept and analytical model in ethology, first introduced by Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz proposed the concept o ...

idol Idol or Idols may refer to: Religion and philosophy * Cult image, a neutral term for a man-made object that is worshipped or venerated for the deity, spirit or demon that it embodies or represents * Murti, a point of focus for devotion or medit ...

-like/model-like appearance). In 2014 she placed fifth in the survey "Which Japanese female soccer player would you want to date?". In 2016 she was selected to be the face of the poster promoting the Internet filtering rules for schools and other children's facilities, newly adopted in Hyogo Prefecture.

Career statistics

Club

Honours

Club

Tokiwaki Gakuen High School Soccer Club * National High School Women's Football Championship Tournament: 2009, 2011 * Challenge League East: 2010, 2011

Japan Women's Football League The , commonly known as the , is a semi-professional women's association football league in Japan. The Nadeshiko League consists of two divisions that correspond to the second and third levels of the Japanese women's football pyramid respective ...

: 2012, 2013 * Empress's Cup All-Japan Women's Soccer Championship Tournament: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 *

Nadeshiko League Cup The Nadeshiko League Cup (Japanese: なでしこリーグカップ) is a cup competition for women's football clubs in Japan. The competition began as the L.League Cup in 1996 and it was abolished after the 1999 edition. It reappeared on the occ ...

: 2013 *

Japan and South Korea Women's League Championship Japan and South Korea Women's League Championship ( ja, 日韓女子リーグチャンピオンシップ, ko, 한일여자리그 챔피언십) was a women's association football competition between the clubs of Nadeshiko League ( Japan Women's Fo ...

: 2012

International

Japan U19 *

AFC U-19 Women's Championship The AFC U-20 Women's Asian Cup is an association football tournament for women's national teams under the age of 20, organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It is organised by the Asian Football Confederation every two years, and serv ...

: 2011

Other appearances

Television

* (

BS Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Compa ...

)

References

External links

Ayu Nakada's profile
at FIFA.com

at

1993 births Living people Japanese women's footballers Women's association football midfielders INAC Kobe Leonessa players Sportspeople from Yamanashi Prefecture {{Japan-women-footy-bio-stub