Japan 0 - 0 Belgium

Date: June 3, 1999 Location: National Stadium, Tokyo Japan 0 0 1H 0 0 2H 0 0 Belgium Scoring Cautions Wilfreid derBrugge Thorven Debreuil Lorenzo Stahlens Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Yutaka Akita, Naoki Soma, Toshihide Saito, Ryuzo Morioka Kazuaki Tasaka (Toshihiro Hattori 45), Toshiya Fujita (Atsushi Yanagisawa 59), Hiroshi Nanami, Teruyoshi Ito, Hidetoshi Nakata, Wagner Lopez (Daisuke Oku 87) Harold De Brucken, Gordon Vidovic (Glen deBuck 28), Lorenzo Stahlens, Thorven Debreuil, Bert Goor, Yves Vander Hague, Wilfreid derBrugge (Christian Jansens 89), Stefan Tangay, Marc Hendricks, Sandi Maartens (Jurgen Kabens 65), Gert Verhayen (Embo Empenza 65)

Despite Japan's big success at the World Youth Championships, in mid-1999, the full national team was still a work in progress. Over the course of 1999, the full national team would struggle through the most disappointing period of the Troussier era, and this would very nearly cost the Frenchman his job. If not for the relative success of his youth teams, Troussier probably would not have made it through the year. One of the cheif praises of Troussier, at least from this writer, was his ability to quickly recognise the abilities of the generation that was then emerging. He immediately placed top priority on developing these youngsters, and sought to bring them up into the full national team quickly. Nevertheless, the performances of Troussier's national teams in 1999 demonstrate that it took him quite a long time to "get it", and start rebuilding the team on a younger base.

The long period of drought for the national team commenced in early June, with the annual Kirin Cup tournament. Japan invited Belgium and Peru as opponents in this round-robin tournament. Neither team brought its very best squad, but they did have a number of quality players, such as Lorenzo Stahlens and Marc Hendricks for the Belgians. In both matches, Japan simply was unable to create serious scoring opportunities. The team managed some good ball movement in midfield, and the defence (which still features players like Yutaka Akita and Naoki Soma, in a four-back set) was solid. However, try as they might, Japan just couldnt get off any decent shots on goal. Both matches ended with the same result -- two scoreless draws