Coach Nils Nielsen warned on Monday that Japan needed “different tools” to win the Women’s World Cup next year after sweeping to the Asian title with a series of gallery performances.
Japan defeated Asian Women’s Cup hosts Australia 1-0 in Saturday’s final in Sydney to lift the trophy for the third time in four tournaments.
Nielsen’s side shone along the way, scoring 29 goals and conceding just one before next year’s World Cup in Brazil.
Japan are the only Asian team to win the world title and Nielsen said they will need to keep improving if they want to do it again.
“We found some parts of ourselves that are very strong,” the Greenland-born coach said after returning to Tokyo.
“There are also things that we saw, we had difficulty getting the finals right because of the strength of the opponents.
