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National Team Match: |
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After an extended period of practice, and several opportunities to refine their technique against some of the lamest opponents in Asia, Japan finally seem to have fine-tuned their game-plan and refined their strategy to perfection. On Wednesday night, as Shizuoka "Ecopa" Stadium, it was time to give the "new look" its worldwide debut, and to the amazement of all who watched, it was indeed a breathtaking sight. Japan have managed to achieve absolute perfection: the dullest, drabbest, slowest-paced, most unimaginative, soporific and deadly form of anti-football ever seen on this planet. Grown men wept. Tiny children clutched at their mothers breasts in horror. Birds fell from the sky. The fans in Shizuoka Stadium were petrified into stone and the very colours of the bleachers leached away, leaving nothing but a cold, dull grey. August 18, 2004 will be remembered as a day of rejoicing for those lovers of golf and gateball and other pastimes of the senile and sedentery. For Zico Japan has triumphed, once and for all, over the beautiful game. Chained it. Emasculated it. Drained it of all life and hope. Killed it. Dismembered it. Buried it deep in a suffocating tomb of lifeless concrete. The beautiful game is dead; long live anti-football!
Those readers who followed our reports of the Asian Cup, in China, will know that throughout those three weeks we teetered back and forth between revulsion at the appalling lack of energy and mindlessly dull tactics, and the understanding that Japan was nevertheless managing to win its matches, and in a tournament like that one, in a hostile environment, victory was the goal, and beauty the sacrifice being offered in the name of achieving a title.
But the Asian Cup is over. Japan was playing a match against Argentina -- arguably the most creative and aggressive team in the world today; the very epitome of beautiful football -- in a home venue, before thousands and thousands of fans, with nothing at stake but pride and the pleasure of those watching the contest. It was a FRIENDLY, for Beelzebub's sake! To put on such a tepid exhibition of mindless and formless anti-football was an insult to all those who paid good money for admission, and indeed, an insult to the beautiful game itself. The saddest thing of all was the result of this match -- a narrow loss that some people will simply shrug off with platitudes about how "after all, it was Argentina!" The fact is, Japan was so thoroughly outplayed in this contest that the final score very well could have been 5-0 or 6-0. One can only conclude that the Argentine players were so thoroughly bored by Japan's soporific play that they were having trouble just keeping their eyes open in the second half.
A recap of the match itself can be completed in just a few sentences. Japan fell behind just four minutes after the start, when Takashi Fukunishi, Akira Kaji and Makoto Tanaka triple-teamed Juan Roman Riquelme in the left corner, pried the ball away from him, and then stood around staring at one another as the ball rolled slowly into the penalty area. Mario Santana could hardly believe his eyes, but as he collected the ball, just two meters outside the left post, the three Japanese players continued to simply stare at him blankly. Keeper Seigo Narazaki, one of the few Japanese players who had a respectable performance in this match, dashed out to try to smother the ball, but it was too late. Santana flicked the ball in front of goal to Galletti, who buried the shot and gave his team an early lead.
Argentina probably deserved three or four more goals by half time, but thanks too poor finishing and some hard work in net by Narazaki, they could only manage one, five minutes before the break. Riquelme collected a cross from the rigth flank just above the penalty arc, and slid a pass to Santana, completely unmarked, at the penalty spot. Again, Santana had to restrain his amazement at being so wide open, but he managed a calm finish and Argentina had a 2-0 lead at the half.
When the second half began, Zico pulled the utterly talentless Tanaka and replaced him with midfielder Toshiya Fujita, shifting to a four-back formation. While this much made sense, he also pulled Yuji Nakazawa, the one defender who was actually playing fairly well, and brought in Naoki Matsuda as a substitute. Amazingly, Tsuneyasu Miyamoto -- who may have set a new record after giving away the ball in Japan's defensive 1/4 of the pitch no less than five times before the halftime break -- was inexplicably left on the pitch until the final whistle. Later substitutions would show similar cluelessness, such as when Zico brought on Masashi Motoyama (presumably to add a bit of creativity), and took off the most creative player already on the pitch: Mitsuo Ogasawara. Meanwhile, Alex Santos, Akira Kaji and Takayuki Suzuki -- all players who contributed virtually nothing to the team's performance (apart from a lucky goal midway through the half which was thoroughly undeserved) -- remained in the match until the final whistle.
As noted above, Japan did pull a goal back midway through the second half, on a corner kick from Santos that Suzuki somehow managed to head into the Argentine net. However, it looked like little more than a stroke of luck, a fluke that had little reflection on the team's offensive performance over the course of the match.
For the time being, time does not permit a full post-mortem. But we will have more to say on this matter in the near future, so check back in a few days for a more thorough analysis of the current state of the Japan National Team
National Team
Overseas Players
Japan 1 - 2 Argentina 