The Aston Villa forward discusses
BREAKING through in her early teens, representing
Japan in Europe and the home Olympics
Mana Iwabuchi is not your average footballer. She made her debut for Japan’s most successful women’s club, NTV Beleza, at the age of 14, and won the
World Cup when she was 18. At the start of this year she took on the challenge of moving back across the world in the midst of a pandemic, joining Aston Villa in a high-profile transfer.
Perhaps because she has spent her adult life – and a sizeable chunk before it – in the glare of the spotlight, the 28-year-old is not fazed by many things. “I didn’t feel any pressure,” she tells the Guardian of the fervour that surrounded her emergence as a mazy dribbling teenager with a lethal eye for goal. “All I felt was that I liked playing
Football. I think I became more aware of the pressure after I became an adult. I only really considered myself an adult in the last two or three years.”