National Team Match:

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Japan 1 - 0 Malta

Date: June 6, 2006 Location: Dusseldorf, GER. Japan 1 1 1H 0 0 2H 0 0 Malta Tamada (2') Scoring Cautions Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Keisuke Tsuboi (Shinji Ono 45), Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, Yuji Nakazawa, Yuichi Komano, Takashi Fukunishi (Junichi Inamoto 69), Hidetoshi Nakata, Shunsuke Nakamura, Alessandro Santos (Koji Nakata 59), Keiji Tamada (Mitsuo Ogasawara 61), Masashi Oguro (Seiichiro Maki 69) . ----

Anticlimax.

That is about the only word that fits. It wasnt really a "surprise" or a "disappointment", since everyone who wasnt asleep for the past four years knows what happens when Japan plays against a team that packs ten men in their own penalty area. And as goalpacking goes, Malta are a cut above teams like the UAE or Oman. No, as anticlimactic as this result was, it was exactly what one might have expected. Indeed, we read several articles over the past few days that openly worried that this might be the result. rather than attribute any sort of prescience to the authors of those articles, lets just admit that this result was a foregone conclusion.

In retrospect, Japan probably was disadvantaged by their early goal. When Alex Santos crossed from the left corner and Keiji Tamada shuffled the ball inside the near post, just two minutes after kickoff, you couls see the smiles break out across the pitch, and the tightly wound determination unwravel. Though Japan continued to play attractive football for long stretches of this contest, after just two minutes they had lost the fire and the determination required to break down a tough, cynical defensive team like Malta. This is, after all, a team that managed three draws against tough opponents in European qualification. They know how to pack a penalty box, and above all, they know how to foul with practiced precision.

But lets not allow the prime culprits off the hood just becausetheir performances were "what you might expect". The reason why we have come to expect such letdowns is that Zico Japan still has some major, glaring weaknesses as a football team. They may play some beautiful football against top opponents like Germany or Brazil, but football is about putting away the weak opponents with class, as well as giving the big boys a run for their money. And you cant put away the weak opponents when key players like Hide Nakata, Takashi Fukunishi and Alex Santos are diddling around as if playing beach soccer with the family on a picnic. Santos was responsible for almost all of the real dangerous chances Malta got in this contest, as he tried to do his "one-man-show" routine and got his pocket picked -- not once, not twice, but three or four times.

And Santos' play was nothing compared with the insipid play of Nakata and Fukunishi, who barely put a foot right all day. Nakata's passes were absolutely horrible, and he played with the sort of lackadaisical disdain that got him benched in Bolton, and seems to be his calling card when he plays against weak opponents. As for Fukunishi, was he really in the starting lineup? It was hard to tell. We may have glimpsed him once or twice over the course of the afternoon, but cant be absolutely certain.

Nobody really covered themselves with glory in this match, but it was the aforementioned three who really put in the most contemptable performances. And Hide was left in the lineup until the final whistle, even though he was clearly the weakest player on the pitch. Actuaslly, it may be extreme to say that NOBODY performed well, Yuichi Komano demonstrated his elusive movement on the right flank several times, and was flawless in defence as well. If only his teammates had fed him the ball a bit more often, he might have managed to produce another goal. Some of the most dangerous chances Japan had came from his penetration on the right flank.

But apart from that, Japan seemed to be playing with a nonchalance that you hate to see even in the best of times. And this is a week before the World Cup! Probably there is no point in even paying attention to this result, As noted before, Japan's performance against defence-minded minnows is so well known that a weak outing comes as no surprise at all, and even a draw would not have really surprised us. We can only hope that the team rediscovers the fire that they showed against Germany, because if they play like this against Australia or Croatia -- forget it folks, even a win over Brazil wont be enough to rescue this team.