Yang So-yeon, the tournament’s Most Valuable Player (MVP), shared her humble and emotional acceptance speech.
The ‘2024 Gatorade Women’s 5v5 Championship’ was held at the Siheung HM Futsal Park on the 19th. The tournament, which is a best-of-three tournament that brings together the top teams from each regional qualifying round, was organized by sports marketing company HNS and partnered with Gatorade.
NimbleAgain became the national champions of women’s amateur futsal. Nimblegain came out on top with a strong physical press that neutralized the opposition’s offense. In the final, the team played well against Anchovy and scored on a buzzer-beater in overtime. The runners-up, Anchovy, are a well-organized team that plays well beyond their individual skills and 카지노사이트 모음 showed great chemistry throughout the tournament.
The MVP was Yang So-yeon, who scored the game-winning goal in the final. Yang was a workhorse who played wherever her team needed her, whether on offense or defense, and scored three goals in every game of the tournament. In the final, she scored a dramatic goal just before the end of regulation when she got her foot on a teammate’s shot-like pass to seal the win.
Speaking to ‘Footballist’ after the awards ceremony, Yang said, “It’s been a long time since I played with my friends, and they helped me a lot. It feels great to have won the MVP award thanks to them. I just put my foot on the shot that my friends hit, but I want to thank them by scoring the final goal.” ”The final goal is a life goal. Most of all, I was happy for my friends. I don’t know what kind of spirit I was in.”Yang So-yeon played women’s soccer in her 20s and is now retired. She was able to participate in the tournament because the requirements for the tournament were ‘women aged 20 to 39 who have never been registered with the Korea Football Association‘ or ‘women aged 40 or older’.
Yang So-yeon said, “I am grateful that there is a tournament where I can play with my friends even though I have long since retired from active duty. It’s not easy to get together with friends in social life. I continue to play futsal because it’s a meaningful way to get together.” ”Soccer is still fun. It’s like an addiction. It’s always nice to win,” he said.
It’s no wonder the team’s name is NimbleAgain. “It’s literally a second chance,” says Yang. “We named ourselves AGAIN because our friends who had been playing since we were in our 20s retired and we were over 40 and wanted to get together and try it again. We’re the oldest older sisters,” she said.
Yang is currently the head coach of the women’s soccer team at Seoul Dongdong High School, where she trains future players. Seoul Dongdong High School is a prestigious school that has produced several national women’s soccer players, including women’s soccer star Ji So-yeon. Yang smiles as brightly as she did when she won the MVP award, saying that she is coaching the team because she has fond memories of playing soccer as a child.
After the interview, Yang came back to Futbolist for a group photo and said, “Recently, women’s recreational soccer has been activated rapidly, but the interest in women’s elite soccer is still low.” “I hope that it will eventually lead to a virtuous cycle that will lead to the development of women’s professional soccer. I’m happy to see more women’s amateur futsal tournaments like the Gatorade tournament and hope that this interest will spread to the players of Seoul Dongsango and women’s soccer in general.”