Japan 0 - 4 Paraguay

Date: July 2, 1999 Location: Asuncion, Paraguay Japan 0 0 1H 2 0 2H 2 4 Paraguay Scoring Miguel Angel Benitez (19') Roque Cantero (40') Miguel Angel Benitez (63') Roque Cantero (87') Shoji Jo (34') Toshihide Saito (75') Cautions Seigo Narazaki, Toshihide Saito, Yutaka Akita, Ryuzo Morioka, Naoki Soma, Teruyoshi Ito, Hiroshi Nanami (Toshiya Fujita 46), Masahiro Ando, Takashi Fukunishi (Atsuhiro Miura 24), Wagner Lopez, Shoji Jo (Kota Yoshihara 65) Ricardo Tavarelli, Francisco Arce, Celso Ayala Ramon Caniza Acuna (53), Carlos Gamarra, Delio Toledo, Julio Cesar Enciso, Diego Gavilan Carlos Paredes Monges 63), Roberto Acuna, Hugo Ovela Irrazabal (Nelson Cuevas 77), Miguel Angel Benitez, Roque Cantero

In mid-1999, still boasting a respectable record with the national team and still flush with the victory achieved by the U-20 team in Nigeria, earlier in the year, Phillippe Troussier took the full national team to South America as a guest participant in the Copa America. This was to be a fateful tournament, since it quickly gave Troussier a bracing sense of what hard work lay ahead of him, and seems to have confirmed in his mind the need to rebuild the team using a youth base. With the perspective of time, we can look at the tour and consider that it was not quite the disaster that it seemed at the time. Though Japan did struggle, they only narrowly missed victory in two of their three matches. If there had been some marginally better finishing, or a bit of luck, the team might have moved on to the second round, and returned home feeling pleased with themselves. But in the long run, this result was probably for the best, since Japan's failure in the Copa America pointed up weaknesses that needed to be addressed.

Following a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to Peru, Japan had the misfortune to face the tournament hosts, Paraguay, in front of a fiercely partisan crowd in Asuncion. The match was never in doubt, as both Paraguayan forwards collected a goal in each half, for a 4-0 win. The fragility of Japan's defence in this particular match was abundantly apparent, and no doubt Troussier's plans to revamp his team and select new personnel for the back line was confirmed at this time. However, one must keep in mind that Troussier was insisting on the need for Yutaka Akita and Toshihide Saito -- two 4-4-2 specialists -- to play his version of the flat three. Saito repeatedly got caught too far forward, while Akita repeatedly made the fierce initial commitment required of a stopper in the 4-4-2, and had no one to clean up at the back when balls were dished off to a trailing player. All four of the goals in this match could be attributed to one of these two causes.