The story of Japanese women s football sisters Ayaro Ito and Miku Ito

Let me tell you a story about Japanese players studying abroad. The name Ayaro Ito may not have been heard of for most Chinese fans. She is 23 years old and has been selected for the U-font national team of the Japanese women's football team at all levels. She also represented the Japanese U17 women's football team in Uruguay, South America in 2018, but she has never been selected for the adult national team, even the B-team of the Japanese women's football team.

August 2020, 18-year-old Ayaro Ito officially entered the first team from Japan's Tokyo Beauty Echelon, but just before the first season of the first professional league of the Japanese women's football team (We League) in 2021, she chose to study abroad. She has been away for more than four years. She has played in Innsbruck and Vienna's No. 1 Women's Football Team in the Austrian Women's League One. In 2023, she came to the Potsdam Turbine Women's Football Team in Germany. At that time, the Potsdam Turbine Women's Football Team was still a German second-tier team.

Last season, she played in the Bundesliga with the newly promoted Potsdam Turbine Women's Football Team. Shen Menglu, who plays in the Bundesliga, should notice this girl with an Asian face in the Potsdam Turbine Women's Football Team. After the end of last season, the team was relegated and returned to the Bundesliga, and Ayaro Ito also left the team. In June this year, she chose to join the German third-level team Dortmund Women's Football Team. I'm curious about why she is so obsessed with playing football overseas.

Because judging from her resume, no matter how hard she tries, she will not have the chance to enter the Japanese women's football national team, and she can't make money by playing football in such low-level women's football leagues. Data shows that the monthly minimum wage standard for women's football players in the German Women's League One is 2,794 euros per month, and the minimum standard for women's League Two is only 1,555 euros. If she switches to the German C-level team, the income will only be less.

Two years ago, I wrote an article introducing Ito Ayaro's sister Ito Miku. Both sisters are obsessed with playing football overseas. Ito Miku, 25 years old, went to Europe one year earlier than Ito Ayaro, and her background is not as good as her sister Ito Ayaro. She has never played professional football, but her luck is a little better than her sister. She has always played football in Spanish teams, playing for Alaves Women's Football Team in the Spanish Second Division and La Liga, and Huelva Women's Football Team in La Liga. She is currently playing football in Granada Women's Football Team in La Liga.

I think Japanese players' overseas study is different from our ideas. They have more personal attributes. Playing football is only part of their own life or work, and it does not have the ideological height we practice for our country. The ultimate goal of our Chinese players' overseas study is to join the national team, and these unknown Japanese players may just make a living.

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