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National Team Match: |
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Some days it simply doesnt pay to get out of bed. Or in this case, it doesnt pay to stay up late, rather than just going to bed and sparing yourself the bad dreams. In a match that Japan ended up losing 1-0 (well, at least that is what the scoreboard read), it was difficult to find anything worth commenting on, in terms of the actual football that was played. Perhaps that isnt too surprising, if you consider that Japan was quite understrength, and the pitch conditions were anything but suitable for a good match (constant rain and a temperature of 9 degrees at kickoff). Even so, this contest set new standards in unwatchability, and the only real events that kept us frm drifting off to sleep were the horrendous calls of the Latvian referee. After 89 minutes of relative futility, the good gentleman in black rewarded his Ukrainian hosts by awarding them a penalty kick on what surely was not a foul, and thus ensuring the 1-0 result. But even before this event, it was a match that ranks as perhaps the most forgettable of the Zico era.
Nevertheless, one should always try to get SOMETHING out of any national team match. Therefore, the RIsing Sun News has compiles a list of the lessons that Zico can take away from this contest (not surprisingmy, most of them are less than encouraging)
1. Koji Nakata is a human-shaped natural disaster, seeking a convenient place to happen. After robbing Japan of a win in the contest against Latvia, he virtually ensured a disappointing result in this contest as well with a dangerous tackle, just minutes after the halftime break, which earned him an immediate red card. Some will say that the challenge he made was not deserving of a red card, and they would be correct . . . technically. However, the referee had indicated very early on what his priorities were (ensuring a Ukraine victory, more than anything else), and it was clear that any dangerous challenges were going to be punished. While Nakata's foul may not have seemed that severe, he did go in feet first on an opponent, and miss the ball completely. Anyone playing at this level should be capable of circumspection . . . .that is to say, the ability to avoid fatal mistakes. Nakata K has now made fatal errors in two consecutive matches, and that should be enough to remove him from the pool of NT contenders once and for all.
2. Nakata may just be Zico's "unlucky word". Apart from the problems with Koji, what exactly has Hidetoshi shown us in this series of matches? Not much, in our view. Certainly, the team's offence is less efficient when Hide is at the point of of attck than it is with Nakamura or Ogasawara running the show. Not only is Nakata's passing erratic, but he demonstrates the sort of prima donna attitude that is never a good component for a winning football team. In the second half, when Japan were reduced to 10 men, Nakata was the only player on the pitch who was not in constant motion, working furiously to salvage a result. In fact, there were at least two occasions when he stood motionless and watched Ukrainian attackers run past on the attack, then proceeded to shout at the defenders after the play and thell them what they were doing wrong. As we noted in the match against Latvia, there are occasions when his vision and ability to read the flow of a game allow him to create interesting opportunities, though in the past two matches, these instances were few and far between. Perhaps the best thing Zico could do would be to select Nakata as an assistant coach, where his vision, understanding of the game and stature in the eyes of teammates could be put to effective use. In a pinch, he could be brought on as a late substitute and . . . who knows . . . might even make a useful contribution on the field as well. But he CERTAINLY is not the player that Japan should have leading their offence at WC2006.
3. AFC referees are not the only ones who can bend the boundaries of credibility in order to ensure a win for the home team, and this is particularly true in a friendly. It is hard to think what one could do to address this particular issue, other than pray for good officiating at the World Cup. However, we do have the sense that Japan needs to begin asserting itself a bit more with FIFA. Surely, any referee with a sense of self-preservation would not even think of making a call like the last-minute "PK" that earned Ukraine the win, if the opponent had been Brazil, Argentina, England, or indeed, almost any other major European team. For one thing, their press would ensure that the officiating call became an international incident, which FIFA could not possibly ignore. Second, the domestic FA would be certain to put pressure on everyone involved (FIFA, the official himself, and his home country FA), to send out a strong message that such a call "should be avoided strenuously in the future".
One often gets the sense that Japan's milquetoast attitude actually encourages referees to favour the opponent, because if they make a bad call against Japan, nothing bad will happen to them, but if they make a bad call the other way, it could be the end of their career. An acquaintance of the Rising Sun News, who is even more cynical about such matters, once explained the principle as follows (referring to an atrocious call in an AFC match): "No referee in UEFA would make a call like that, since they know that they might very well never officiate another match again, as long as they live. No referee in South America would make a call like that, since they know that they might very well not live long enough to officiate another match."
4. Though the back line of Tsuboi and Moniwa did a good job of containing opponents on the ground, in both of these matches, they simply do not have the stature and strength in the air to do the job against tall, powerful opponents at the international level. Since Zico cannot be absolutely sure that Yuji Nakazawa will remain healthy and available for all of Japan's World Cup matches, it is URGENT that he find other tall, powerful defenders who can serve as a potential replacement (is there an echo in here, or is someone shouting "Iwamasa"?). Yoshinobu Minowa did a decent job in a reserve tole, in this match, and does not deserve any blame for the PK call. However, he did seem a bit unsure of himself on occasion, and would need to see a lot more action before next summer if he is to serve as a backup to Nakazawa. Whatever Zico does, he needs to start right away to groom a tall, strong defender to serve as the potential replacement for Nakazawa, and as a late defensive substitute. If not, Japan will face serious difficulty at the World Cup.
5. Twelve months in France have turned Daisuke Matsui into a very solid and competitivve attacking midfielder. When he came on in the second half, Japan actually seemed to have a chance of claiming the winning goal, even though they were a man short. Not only has Matsui developed much more physical toughness and athe ability to hold the ball against strong challenges, but he has acquired the sort of tough cynicism that one associates with European (especially second-tier European) football.
One sequence of play illustrated this perfectly. Shortly after he came on, Matsui made a sleek dribblingrun up the left flank, but was eventually manhandled off the ball by two Ukrainian defenders. Matsui clearly felt that he had been pulled off the ball from behind, but rather than lay on the ground and wail at the referee, he picked himself up and set off after the offender. As the defender tried to squeeze past him on the sideline, Matsui swung a powerful kick, catching enough of the ball to send it out of play, but following through with enough force to take out both ankles of his opponent and send him crashing heavily to the turf. Though he immediately proferred a hand and helped his opponent up, the message had been sent: Dont try to push me around; I know how to play that game too. On the evidence of just the past two matches, we would not hesitate to put Matsui ahead of Hide Nakata in the list of choices to play an attacking midfielder role. Naturally, two short appearances is not enough to judge Matsui's "complete game", but he certainly has given Zico notice that he deserves to be in the WC2006 squad.
6. Yuichi Komano is another player who needs to be viewed as a candidate for the 2006 squad. Though he did not get forward as much, in this contest, as he did against Latvia, his defending was almost flawless and on the few occasions he did make a run up the right sideline, it created some ofthe best scoring opportunities for Japan of the entire match. The only drawback we can think of is that Komano plays on the right side, rather than the left, where Japan could clearly use an effective replacement for the increasingly ineffective Alex Santos
7. Naohiro Takahara is not making a very effective contribution to Japan's attack, and Zico badly needs to reassess his offensiver strategy. Though Takahara clearly does have some useful skills as an individual striker, and we were particularly impressed with his quick release and powerful shot, the package of abilities that he brings simply are not a good fit with the rest of the Japan national team. On his own, Takahara is neither quick enough to outrun defenders, tall enough to jump over them, nimble enough to dribble around them, or powerful enugh to bull past them. If he were used in some role besides centre forward, he might be able to contribute. However, he cannot do the things that are asked of him at the "Number 1 striker" position.
This could be viewed as bad news for Zico -- barring a dramatic show by Sota Hirayama over the next few months, which earns the young Heracles Almelo striker a spot in the team, there are no other options left to play the centre forward position for Japan. Takayuki Suzuki is too poor at finishing, Yoshito Okubo too small and unpolished, Masashi Oguro too physically weak and inconsistent, and Tatsuhiko Kubo too injury-prone and undependable. However, if Zico can just bring himself to abandon the conventional logic of a two-striker front line, this lack of a "big man up front" might actually turn out to be a positive factor for Japan. We have always felt that Japan looks most dangerous when playing with a non-conventional attack line, employing either a lone striker with the role of feeding his attacking midfielders out of the post, or three small, speedy and interchangeable players up front. It will be interesting to see if Zico tries out such a formation in the remaining friendly matches this year.
8. Japan play poorly on a wet pitch. This has been the most consistently accurate trend for the Japan NT over the past five or six years. Every truly distressing result that we can recall (the 0-5 loss to France in 2000, the loss to Turkey in the World Cup, the 0-3 loss to Argentina at the start of Zico's reign, and now this match against Ukraine) has come on a wet pitch, in sloppy and uncomfortable conditions. In some ways, this is to be expected, since Japan's style of football relies heavily on quick and precise ball movement, technique and coordination. However, the extent of Japan's woes on a wet pitch is cause for some concern, since it is not simply an "occasional" problem, but something that seems to happen EVERY time the team is forced to deal with these sort of weather conditions. About the only thing we can do about this factor is to pray for sunshine and blue skies in Germany, next summer.
9. Zico does not seem to have a good strategic mind for substitution. Though this problem has not been quite as obvious in "important" matches, and may simply reflect Zico's desire to experiment during friendly matches, the substitutions he made in these past two matches, in particular, were hard to understand. In many cases, Zico sems to stick stubornly with players who are having a bad day, while taking off those who are at the centre of the team's "flow". The changes in the Ukraine match were not quite as disturbing as those in the clash against Latvia (and may have been planned ahead of time, and thus not fit well with the situation Japan faced, playing a man short in the second half). Nevertheless, we are a bit concerned by this, since the negative impact that Zico's substitutions have had on team performance in recent contests would be a fatal problem if they were repeated at the World Cup.
10. Last but not least, the match against Ukraine teaches us not to put too much emphasis on a team's performance in friendly matches. At the end of the day, the result of this contest was dictated less by the performance of Japan's players than it was by the whims of the referee and the absence of many of Japan's most important players (particularly in defence). In a crucial World Cup match, would a referee have dared send off Koji Nakata on a straight red card, for a mildly rough tackle? Would he be bold enough to award a PK against Minowa in the final seconds of the match, when there had been no visible foul whatsoever? And for that matter, would Koji Nakata and Minowa have even been on the pitch. The answers to these questions tell us all we need to know about the "deeper meaning" of this match against Ukraine. As much as we dislike hearing the comment when. So everyone repeat after me --
"It was just a friendly".
National Team
Overseas Players
Japan 0 - 1 Ukraine 