National Team Match:
Japan 0 - 0 Korea

Date: 7 Dec, 2003 Location: Yokohama Int'l Stadium Japan 0 0 1H 0 0 2H 0 Korea Scoring -- Cautions -- Seigo Narazaki, Keisuke Tsuboi, Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, Yuji Nakazawa (Masashi Motoyama 45), Nobuhisa Yamada, Takashi Fukunishi (Toshiya Fujita 45) Yasuhito Endo, Alessandro Santos, Mitsuo Ogasawara, Yoshito Okubo, Tatsuhiko Kubo (Terueaki Kurobe 80) TBA

In their third meeting of the year, Japan and Korea put on a performance that will leave neither team feeling particularly proud. Korea can console themselves with the fact that they claim the East Asian Championship trophy, by virtue of having scored one more goal than Japan over the course of the tournament (both teams were even on points and goal difference). However, their inability to score -- or even really threaten a goal -- despite playing for 73 minutes with an extra man, will surely temper any celebrations. Japan, meanwhile, will no doubt be upset that they failed to win the tournament on home soil. However, after going a man down on a very dodgy call by the referee, the team picked up its game and can actually claim to have outplayed the ful-strength Korean team over the final 45 minutes.

Yoshito Okubo earned the goat's role for collecting two yellow cards in just 17 minutes, though his second card was the result of a badly missed call by the referee. Though the Singaporean official's performance overall was not particularly bad, three plays in particular will raise eyebrows over his partiality. Twice, Japanese players went down in the box, and both times there appeared to be contact, but the official awarded yellow cards. However, when a Korean went down in the box on what looked to be an equally, if not more blatant effort to steal a PK, he merely waved play on. Even if all three plays really were dives, the failure to card both teams equally for the same offence is a bit difficult to understand.

Okubo earned one yellow for showing his cleats to a Korean defender, and had no complaint about the call. But just a few minutes later as he dribbled across the top of the box, Okubo was tripped by a defender on a play that clearly included some illegal contact. The referee was unimpressed, and sent Okubo to the showers. But after going down a man, Japan picked up their performance, and despite a slight edge to Korea in terms of ball possession, had by far the better scoring opportunities over the remaining 70 minutes. This was particularly true in the second half, when the ineffective Takashi Fukunishi and defender Yuji Nakazawa were replaced by Toshiya Fujita and Masashi Motoyama. Japan had virtually all of the initiative over the final 45 minutes, and came within a whisker of scoring on two or three occasions. But Korea managed to fend off the pressure, thanks to their superior numbers, and the match finished without a score.

Post-mortems on this tournament are likely to vary widely, depending upon what the author chooses to single out as worthy of criticism. Clearly, Japan did not cover themselves in glory in this competition. The 1-0 victory over Hong Kong, in partricular, showed up a lack of finishing prowess that would be even more worrisome if not for the fact that Japan's two starting strikers, Atsushi Yanagisawa and Naohiro Takahara, were absent. Though Tatsuhiko Kubo finally managed to get his first goal in a Japan uniform, neither he nor Yoshito Okubo did anything to strenthen their claim for a permanent spot in the national team.

The only truly dangerous source of offence over the course of the tournament was Mitsuo Ogasawara, who did a brilliant job of orchestrating play and creating scoring opportunities for his teammates despite an injury which kept him in the physio room for the entire week. Even without the opportunity to practice with his teammates, Ogasawara was the clear star of the tournament for Japan, and the team's virtual collapse in the final 25 minutes against Hong Kong, when Oga was replaced by Daisuke Oku, only served to highlight his importance. Fujita and Motoyama both provided useful support in the second half of the Korea match, but did not see enough action to merit a rating one way or the other.

The other midfielders delivered performances that ranged from marginal to awful. Alex Santos and Nobuhisa Yamada may serve as reasonably effective wing backs, but when pushed into the midfield role in a three-bakc lineup, their performances were lacking. Santos was slightly the better of the two, but every time he touched the ball Japan's momentum and fluidity collapsed, as every other player on the pitch had to stop and wait for him to display his (usually unsuccessful) individualistic one-on-one moves. Fukunishi and Yasuhito Endo, meanwhile, contributed virtually nothing over the course of three matches. Apart from occasional support for the defensive line, their involvement in play was easy to overlook. It often seemed like the back three, Ogasawara, Santos and the two forwards were the only players on the pitch for Japan. The real shame about this was the fact that Zico did not accord Yuki Abe an opportunity to show whether he could do a better job. Given the performances of Fukunishi and Endo, he hardly could have done worse.

Apart from Ogasawara's strong performace, the only bright spot for Japan, in this tournament, was the defence, which has now maintained a clean sheet over four matches (including the Cameroon match). Both Keisuke Tsuboi and Yuji Nakazawa looked extremely solid in this tournament, whle Seigo Narazaki proved equal to all the attempts that opponentws managed on net. Although Tsuneyasu Miyamoto made the occasional blunder, stemming in part from his lack of speed or strength in the air, his positioning and control of the back line were generally good. Nevertheless, the fact that Japan looked most dangerous in the final 45 minutes against Korea, when they reverted to a four-back line, will surely serve as a rebuke to those who have been repeatedly harping on the idea of using three backs on a regular basis. The three back set did nothing except take one potential player out of the attack, and push Santos and Yamada into positions where they were less useful. Even with only ten men, Japan looked more comfortable, and more efficient when playing four backs than they did in a three-back set. If this means that Zico has to abandon the idea of including three-back specialist Miyamoto in his national team, so be it.

Below is the full roster for the match against Korea: