International Friendly Match:
Japan 0 - 1 Korea

Date: April 26, 2000 Location: Seoul Olympic Stadium Japan 0 1H 0 0 2H 1 Korea Scoring Ha Seok-ju (78) Cautions Tae-Ha Park Tae-Young Kim Seigo Narazaki, Naoki Matsuda, Ryuzo Morioka, Koji Nakata (Shunsuke Nakamura 67), Hiroshi Nanami, Shigeyoshi Mochizuki, Hidetoshi Nakata, Junichi Inamoto, Shinji Ono (Toshihiro Hattori 57), Masashi Nakayama, Naohiro Takahara Kim Yong-Dae , Kang Cheol, Kim Tae-Young, Hong Myung-Bo, Lee Min-Sung, Choi Sung-Yong (Lee Young-Pyo 71'), Yoo Sang-Chul (Park Jin-Sub 77'), Noh Jung-Yoon (Yoon Jung-Hwan 59'), Ha Seok-Joo, Park Tae-Ha (Kim Do-Keun 62'), Kim Do-Hoon (Choi Yong-Soo 52')

As the year 2000 progressed, Japan's national team gradually made the transition from the "old guard" to the younger players who would form the core of the team until 2002. Although Japan's tour of Hong Kong and Macao, earlier in the year, was effectively the last hurrah for the old-timers, Phillippe Troussier had not yet figured out what sort of lineup and strategy he would use to meld the members of the U-23 team into the full national team. In their first encounter of the year with Korea, Troussied got a quick lesson on what would NOT work, and although the result was relatively close, it was clear that further reorganisations was needed.

After a fairly dull first half, in which both teams concentrated on defence and Japan was unable to create many offensive thrusts, due to tight, double-coverage on Hide Nakata in the middle and typically aggressife ball-chasing by the Koreans, Troussier came out in the second half with a bid to shorten the field and exploit Japan's superior short-passing game. The back line pushed far forward, and adopted man-on-man coverage of the Korean strikers. This proved o be a fatal error. The Koreans were initially placed under pressure by the short-passing tacktics, but scrambling defensive work kept Japan from getting many shots. However, whenever they made a steal, Korea looked for chances to counterattack in numbers. The key player in these surges forward was libero Hong Myung-bo, whose speed and precision ball touches are as good as any forward. Due to their man-coverage system, Japan had no one available to pick up Hong when he dashed into attack, and following two or three close calls, Korea finally got the goal they deserved will 12 minutes left.

Troussier finally saw the futility of his strategy, and over the next four minutes, brought on a group of younger, fresher players(Atsuhiro Miura, Naohiro Takahara, Shunsuke Nakamura and Hiromi Kojima) to try to match Korea's speed in attack. This started to have much more promising results, and for the final ten minutes of play, Japan had several chances to equalise. However, it was too little, too late, and Korea hung on for a 1-0 win.