National Team Match:

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Japan 1 - 1 (PK 4-3) Australia

Date: July 21, 2007 Location: Vietnam Japan 1 (4) 0 1H 0 1 2H 1 0 ET1 0 0 ET2 0 4 PK 3 1 Australia (3) Naohiro Takahara (71') Scoring John Aliosi (69') Yuki Abe Cautions John Aloisi Harry Kewell David Carney Sent off Vince Grella Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Akira Kaji (Yasuyuki Konno 88), Yuji Nakazawa, Yuki Abe, Yuichi Komano, Keita Suzuki, Kengo Nakamura (Kisho Yano 115'), Shunsuke Nakamura , Yasuhito Endo, Seiichiro Maki (Hisato Sato 112'), Naohiro Takahara TBA

Lets see how good a coach you are. Dont worry if you havent got any experience, or even if you are a relative newcomer to football. This test is really easy. Im sure anyone with half a brain will be able to get the answer right without even working up a sweat.

OK, heres the situation: Its the 75 minute of regulation time. Your team has just scored a goal to equalise the match, moments after the opponents took a fortunate lead on their first shot on net of the entire match. An opposing player whacks your star striker across the face with the back of his hand and is shown a straight red card (a harsh call, despite the fact that he was clearly playing the player and not the ball. But then, a good coach takes the breaks that fortune sends his way)

The opponents are clearly tired, they have already used all three of their substitutions, and there are still fifteen minutes left in the contest. What do you do?

A. Throw on three energetic, offensive oriented players and ram the ball at the opponent's goal with everything youve got, until you get the winning tally.
B. Bring on one quick striker to put more pressure on the opposing defence, and one speedy and highly reliable defender to ensure that the opponent cant use speed to produce a lucky counterattack. Save one sub in case the match goes into extra time.
C. Wait until regulation time is completely over and there is only a minute or two of injury time left to bring on your first sub (a mediocre, not very speedy midfielder). Wait until the first 15 minutes of extra time are almost over to use a second substitution, and wait until seconds before the final whistle to use your third substitution.

If you answered "C", you are a certifiable idiot.

You also (apparently) have what it takes to coach the Japan national team. Thats right folks. Ivica Osim apparently believes that the best thing to do when you have the opposition down on the canvas and bleeding from a thousand paper cuts, is to step back, take a deep breath, and cautiously wait to see what happens next.

All credit to Australia for their hard work in defence, but the fact of the matter is, Japan had their opponents hooked, played, worn out, nettet, pulled into the boat, and laid out flat on the wooden cutting board ready for the final knife stroke, but for reasons that are difficult to fully understand, they didnt seem to care enough to deliver the coup de grace. And while some players are at least partly culpable, most of the blame must be laid at the feet of the man who failed the simple coaching quiz presented above.

PKs dont count. And we would be saying that regardless of whether Japan won the shootout or lost. If you have a chance to win a match in regulation, either you do it, or you dont deserve any credit regardless of the final outcome.

A few pints of icy beer and good night's sleep can do wonders for your outlook on life. Yet even now, almost 24 hours after Japan completed its penalty kick victory over Aaustralia, it is hard to look back on the contest without a sense of disappointment for opportunities missed. This was definitely a match that Japan should have won in regulation time, and though it may seem a bit petty to harp on details when the most important job (claiming the win) was achieved, there is no question that a better performance by players and coach alike would surely have allowed them to avoid extra time altogether. If Osim and his coaching staff, the players, and the JFA brain trust as well are content to celebrate their good fortune and fail to consider what went wrong, then they are missing a golden opportunity to make this team far more competitive in the run-up to WC2010 qualifiers, which begin just one year from now.

First of aall, lets give credit where credit is due. Japan went up against a far more physically imposing and athletically honed opponent, and manaaged to neutralise Aaustralia's advantages in size, speed and power almost completely. The crisp passing game that Japan has been perfecting for the better part of a decade really sets them apart from the rest of the competition in Asia. Regardless of the self-serving sound bites emanating from down under, any fan who watched this contest with anything other than green-and-gold-tinted vision could see which was the better team. And while Australia deserve credit for hard work and very tenacious defending, it was only poor execution with the final shot, coupled with a slightly over-cautious strategic stance, which prevented Japan from finishing off the contest much sooner.

So now that we know what Japan's position is relative to the other top teams in Asia, now what? Does anyone really think that this sort of "adequate competence" will be enough to take Japan far in the World Cup? If so, it is time for you to give the matter more thought. Even in Asia, competent technical play alone will never guaraantee a team success. There needs to be a far greater degree of mental focus and physical exertion, to accompany the technical skill, if Japan is to move to the next level.

Coach Osim is the primary -- and most deserving -- target of our annoyance with Japan's play in the final 45 minutes of this match (ie, from the 75 minute of regulation time to the start of the PK shootout. Some of the comments he made in his post-match conference suggest that he recognizes his own mistake, and in retrospect, understands that his catatonic reaction to Vince Grella getting sent off is the most immediate reason why Japan failed to win the contest in regulation time. In 35-degree, intensely humid conditions, it is simply inconscionable that he waited until the 88 minute to bring on his first substitute of the match. The more so when you consider the sort of players that he had at his disposal, on the bench. Does any Jubilo Iwata fan (or any J.League fan, for that matter) think that the exhausted Aussie defence could have kept up with Yoshiaki Ota if he had been the player to replace Akira Kaji, rather than the slow and more defensive-oriented Yasuyuki Konno? How about if Ota, Takahara and Hisato Sato had all been racing furiously about the penalty box? And can you even IMAGINE the sort of havoc that would have resulted if Sato, Ota, and (well, take your pick of the Chiba chibbies -- Hanyu, Yamagishi or Mizuno all have the energy, speed and hunger to liven up this sort of match) had been brought on the second that the referee showed Grella the red card?

The failure to use his three substitutions effectively is something that even Osim himself must surely recognise as an error. If he draws the right lessons from this incident, then fair enough -- no coach is perfect, and the positive things that the big Bosnian has achieved with this team are certainly enough to offset one moment of helpless panic. But there are some other problems that Osim also needs to address, which may be midlly understandable at this point in his reigh, but which will become less and less excusable as time goes on.

First of all, it is long past time for Osim to abandon his effort to turn Yuichi Komano into a left-sided player. He may do a better job on the left than some of the alternatives, but that simply is not his position. He belongs on the right, where he feels most comfortable. Whatever defensive skills and experience Akira Kaji might bring to the team are more than offset by his lack of pace and mediocre work rate (OK, its true that he does cover quite a bit of ground over the course of a match. But a wing back in this type of system needs to be the Energizer bunny of football -- constantly on the move and possessing unquenchable resources of stamina and speed. Kaji simply does not fit the bill, and he certainly is not good enough to justify playing Komano out of position. .

The next most important issue for Osim is to find a midfield player who can create a bit more of a spark when the team needs it. While each has their own specific skills and abilities, the two Nakamuras and Yasuhito Endo all have exactly the same, identical weakness -- none of them are capable of outrunning an opponent. Unless Japan happen to be playing the Galapagos Land Tortise national team, the combination of Nakamura, Nakamura and Endo in attacking midfield is never going to be quick enough to slip behind an opposing team's defence with any regularity, and as both Endo and Kengo demonstrated in this match, even on the rare occasion that they do get into the clear, they end up being overtaken by the defence before they can get a clean shot off.

Of the three, Endo seems to be the least valuable, though we would not mind seeing him take over Kengo's spot . . . IF some more energetic and quick-footed dribbler can be brought in to support Shunsuke at the point of the attack. There certainly is no shortage of such players in the J.League . . . and we havent even considered the long-overdue option of calling up Daisuke Matsui, from Le Mans. Both Nakamuras thrive on their club teams becasuse they have teammates who do the running and penetrating work, allowing them to drift about the pitch, using guile, precision and sharp vision to unlock the defence for a teammate to run through. But when you have three such players all together in the same area of the pitch, the result is a lot of clever, asesthetically pleasing ball movement without the slightest prayer of ever actually breaking through a top-quality opposing defence.

Last but not least, Osim needs to find someone besides Seiichiro Maki to partner Takahara up front. Maki's performance against Vietnam raised his stock a bit, among national team fans, but in our view he has never earned the right to be anything other than Takahara's backup. In that role, he may be valuable enough to keep around until 2010. But as a starter, he is basically a waste of space. Both Kisho Yano and Hisato Sato offer dimensions that Maki does not -- and never has been able to -- provide. But there are several other options who also deserve consideration. The point is that Maki has been given his chance as a starting striker. And despite his two goals against Vietnam, he has never really justified this selection. Until every other option has been tried and tested, Maki's role should be restricted to coming on as a late sub for Takahara, and nothing else.

At the end of the day, we have to admit that Japan is moving in the right direction. The position that the JFA, Japanese press and national team fan base put Ivica Osim into virtually ensured that he would be unable to meet the full expectations, and that should have been clear from the outset. Everyone understands why he was expected to produce results at this tournament, but that doesnt mean those expectations were "fair" or "legitimate". He has been trying to introduce a completely new and unique type of football to the Japanese national team, with predominantly new players, and yet he had only 10 months and a similar number of preparatory matches to complete this total and dramatic transition. Basically, the JFA and the press have been asking the impossible, and perhaps that explains why he has reacted with such annoyance and undisguised irritation.

So lets all admit that the wily old fox has done a pretty darn good job of creating a competitive football team, under what were clearly oppressive conditions.

Once that recognition has been provided, and he is given a chance to bask in the satisfaction of his accomplishments at this Asian Cup, then it will be fair -- and indeed, essential -- to start holding his feet to the fire and insisting that he address the visible shortcomings that still remain in this team. If he does overcome his preference for certain "familiar" individuals, and corrects some of the tactical shortcomings that we have seen in the Asian Cup so far, three years of hard work,should be plenty of time for him to build a team that can really make a decent impact at the World Cup, in South Africa.