Arsenal caused a stir in the transfer market ahead of the 2014 FA Women’s Super League 1 Spring Series when they acquired the services of experienced Japanese international forward Shinobu Ohno from French club Lyon.
The player arrived at Meadow Park alongside fellow national team colleague and FIFA Women’s World Cup Germany 2011 winner Yukari Kinga.
The pair brought more than 200 senior international appearances with them to England in moves which got Arsenal fans excited.
Sadly for Ohno, the move to Arsenal didn’t really see her perform at her very best. The player was a regular in the side but failed to score in any of The Gunners’ matches in the 2014 FA Women’s Super League 1. The forward lasted just a year in England before returning home to join Japanese Nadeshiko Division 1 club INAC Kobe Leonessa, a side who she had already represented earlier in her career. Ohno returned to Japan with a 2014 Women’s FA Cup winners’ medal after playing the full 90 minutes of the final against Everton in Milton Keynes. She also featured in The Gunners’ 1-0 FA Women’s Continental League Cup final defeat to Manchester City that year.
In Ohno’s first spell as an INAC Kobe Leonessa player, the forward had won back-to-back league and Empress’s Cup doubles and she added two further Empress’s Cups to her tally in her second near-three-year spell.
In 2018, an ageing Ohno swapped INAC Kobe Leonessa for league rivals Nojima Stella Kanagawa Sagamihara where she spent the final year of her playing career. She left Stella in 2019 and was hoping to find a new club to extend her playing days. It wasn’t to be for Ohno who finally called time on her 20-year professional career in February 2020.
A player who will not be remembered for her time in England, Ohno is a Japanese footballing legend. She netted 40 goals in 139 senior international appearances for her country while the player ended her Nadeshiko Division 1 playing days as the league’s all-time record goalscorer. She goes down in history as one of just 23 Japanese players to ever win a FIFA Women’s World Cup while she also holds an Asian Games Gold Medal. Ohno is icon of the women’s game and a player who was very much unstoppable in the early years of her career.