Aston Villa have signed Japan goalkeeper Akane Okuma, subject to visa approval.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old joins the Women’s Super League side from Japanese club INAC Kobe Leonessa, where she had played since 2024.<\/p>\n
Okuma began her senior career at JEF United Chiba.<\/p>\n
She represented Japan at youth level and was part of the senior squad that won the 2026 AFC Women’s Asian Cup alongside new Villa team-mate Maya Hijikata.<\/p>\n
Villa director of women’s football Marisa Ewers said: “Akane is an exciting young talent with a lot of potential and we’re delighted to welcome her to Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
“As a club, we’re always looking at opportunities to identify talent in different markets around the world, and we’re pleased to bring a player of Akane’s profile to Villa.”<\/p>\n
Okuma said she was looking forward to the next step in her career.<\/p>\n
“I’m very happy to be here,” she said. “I feel really fortunate to be a part of this club, and I can’t wait to play with the team.”<\/p>\n
Villa finished ninth in the 12-team WSL last season. The league’s 2026-27 fixtures are scheduled to be released on 30 July, with the competition expanding to feature 14 teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa have signed Japan goalkeeper Akane Okuma, subject to visa approval. The 21-year-old joins the Women’s Super…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-814313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}