is a former

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

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 played for the Japan women's national football team as a

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

Club career

Yamago was born in Saitama on January 16, 1975. After graduating from high school, she joined Prima Ham FC Kunoichi (later ''Iga FC Kunoichi'') in 1993. In 2002, she moved to her local club Saitama Reinas FC (later ''Urawa Reds''). In 2005, she moved to

Women's Premier Soccer League The Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL) is an amateur women's soccer league in the United States and Canada. It is the top amateur league for women's soccer in the United States soccer pyramid, below only National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). T ...

club

California Storm California Storm is an American women's soccer team, founded in 1995 as the Sacramento Storm, dropping the city name in favor of California the following season. The team is a member of the Women's Premier Soccer League, the second tier of wom ...

. At the end of the 2005 season, she returned to

Urawa Reds , colloquially Urawa Reds (浦和レッズ), also known as Mitsubishi Urawa Football Club from April 1992 to January 1996, is a professional football club in the city of Saitama, part of the Greater Tokyo Area in Japan. The club plays in the J ...

in September. In 2012, she moved to AS Elfen Saitama. She retired in 2014. She was selected to the

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

Best XI 10 times (

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

and

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

National team career

On June 15, 1997, Yamago debuted for the Japan national team against

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

.Japan Football Association
/ref> She was a member of Japan squads at the

and

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

Women's World Cups, as well as the

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

. At the 2011 World Cup, Japan won the championship. She played 96 games for Japan until 2011.

National team statistics

List of match i
2010
at Japan Football Association

Honors

FIFA Women's World Cup The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association ( FIFA), the sport's international governing bo ...

: ''Champion (1)'':

Football at the Asian Games The men's football tournament has been a regular Asian Games sporting event since the 1951 edition, while the women's tournament began in 1990. History The first Asian Games had football tournament. Since the 2002 Asian Games, age limit for ...

: ''Gold Medal (1)'':

References

External links

* * * * 1975 births Living people Japanese women's footballers Japan women's international footballers Nadeshiko League players Iga FC Kunoichi players Urawa Red Diamonds Ladies players Chifure AS Elfen Saitama players FIFA Women's World Cup-winning players 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup players 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup players 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup players 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup players Olympic footballers for Japan Footballers at the 2004 Summer Olympics Asian Games medalists in football Asian Games gold medalists for Japan Asian Games silver medalists for Japan Asian Games bronze medalists for Japan Footballers at the 1998 Asian Games Footballers at the 2002 Asian Games Footballers at the 2006 Asian Games Footballers at the 2010 Asian Games Medalists at the 1998 Asian Games Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games Medalists at the 2006 Asian Games Medalists at the 2010 Asian Games Women's association football goalkeepers California Storm players Women's Premier Soccer League players Japanese expatriate sportspeople in the United States Expatriate women's soccer players in the United States Association football people from Saitama (city) {{Japan-women-footy-bio-stub