National Team Match:
Japan 2 - 1 Singapore

Date: 31 March, 2004 Location: Jalan Besar Std., Singapore Japan 2 1 1H 0 1 2H 1 1 Singapore Naohiro Takahara (34') Toshiya Fujita (82') Scoring Indra Bin Daud (63') Cautions Seigo Narazaki, Akira Kaji, Keisuke Tsuboi, Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, Alessandro Santos, Junichi Inamoto, Shinji Ono, Shunsuke Nakamura (Toshiya Fujita 67), Hidetoshi Nakata, Atsushi Yanagisawa (Takayuki Suzuki 68), Naohiro Takahara (Keiji Tamada 76) Redojko Arramovio, Hassan bin Abd Sunny, Baihakki bin Khaizan, Suramani, Iskandar bin Sahak, Daniel Bennell, Tan Kim-Leung, Nazri Nasir, Mohammed bin Ishak, Muhammed bin Muhammed, Mirko Grabovao, Indrea bin Daud

For the second match in a row, Japan came away with 3 points, despite an appalling performance that quite literally reduced captain Hidetoshi Nakata to tears. In the post-match interview, the Bologna midfielder had tears rolling down his cheeks . . . tears of joy? not bloody likely! Tears of relief? Getting warmer. No, the fact of the matter is that Nakata knew darn well that he played like crap, and those tears on his face simply showed that he, like most of the other Japan team members, wanted nothing else but to find a nice hole to crawl into and die.

Oh, it would take a very warped mind indeed to suggest that Singapore deserved to win this match. No, Japan outplayed them from start to finish, and despite their pathetic performance, scored four times (two were called back for offsides, despite the fact that replays left no doubt whatsoever that the goals were legitimate). The point is that in matches like this one, against totally outmatched competition, if you cant put the opponent away with aplomb, you simply cant claim to have played well. And in this particular case, if we were handing out player ratings on a scale of 1 to 10, several of the starters would receive double-digit negative points!

The truly annoying thing about this match is the fact that Japan totally and completely outplayed their opponent, generating 20 or 30 wide open shots over the course of the match. THEY MISSED EVERY BLOODY ONE! From the first minute of play, when Shinji Ono sent a rebound from a corner kick wide to the left of goal, until the dying moments, when Alex Santos led a 3-on-1 break to the edge of the penalty box and somehow managed to pass the ball directly into the legs of the lone defender, Japan squandered opportunity after opportunity. Nakata and Inamoto, who were remarkably left in for the full 90 minutes, probably had the worst outings of all. To put it bluntly, if I had turned in such a pathetic performance in a national team uniform, I would go home tonight and commit ritual suicide, since that would be about the only possible way to atone for such incompetence. The rest of the overseas brigade -- Takahara, Yanagisawa, Nakamura and Ono -- fared little better. In fact, only Ono looked the least bit useful, and that is only when one considers that he is not yet fully recovered from a serious injury.

A lot of people will probably use this as an excuse to bash Zico further. Though he perhaps does deserve criticism for leaving Nakata and Inamoto in for the full 90 (this writer would have subbed both within 15 minutes of kickoff -- assuming I had bothered to start them in the first place), the poor result in this match does not deserve to be laid at his door. On the contrary, it is the players who are performing like a bunch of headless chickens. The strategy is working fine, but when Hide Nakata misses three completely uncontested shots from less than ten meters over the course of a match (and both Takahara and Yanagisawa miss four apiece), you have to conclude that its the PLAYERS who arent doing the job.

What more can we say? Takahara put Japan in front in the 33 minute when a defender deflected his shot into the net. After Singapore equalised on a rather lucky but not unexpected counterattack, Toshiya Fujita (one of the few players who can feel halfway satisfied with his performace in this contest) slammed home a rebound from a corner kick to give Japan the win. Big bloody deal! The performance was pathetic, and the players who took part in this farce should be ashamed of themselves.

I want my money back!

Below is the full roster for Japan's match against Singapore: