National Team Match:

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Japan 2 - 3 Saudi

Date: July 25, 2007 Location: Vietnam Japan 2 1 1H 1 1 2H 2 3 Saudi Arabia Yuji Nakazawa (37') Yuki Abe (53') Scoring Yasser Al-Qahtani (35') Malek (47') Malek (57') Cautions Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Akira Kaji (Naotake Hanyu 75), Yuji Nakazawa, Yuki Abe, Yuichi Komano, Keita Suzuki, Kengo Nakamura (Kisho Yano 87'), Shunsuke Nakamura , Yasuhito Endo, Seiichiro Maki (Hisato Sato 68'), Naohiro Takahara TBA

12 months on, and what has changed?

Japan still has a coach who selects players on the basis of personal loyalty and favoritism rather than footballing logic, actual performance and current form

Japan still has a coach who seems incapable of recognizing when he makes a mistake ,and doing something to correct it, rather than making the same mistakes over and over and over, like some neurotic rat running down the same blind alley of a maze over and over and over again.

Japan still has players who seem incapable of shooting the ball when given the opportunity. Better to pass off to another teammate and let them take the blame for failure.

Japan still has the ability to outplay an opponent from start to finish of a match, from a technical standpoint, yet lose the result because the other team posesses the emotional commitment, determination and killer instinct that Japan fails to even comprehend, much less develop

In short, after 12 months of effort, Japan finds itself EXACTLY where it was at the end of World Cup 2006.

Perhaps these are simply problems that are ingrained in the character, and the team will never be able to overcome them regardless of who is the coach. If that is the case, then it really doesnt matter. Muddling along for another three years wont affect the final outcome in any way.

However, you can be sure that without a dramatically different approach, Japan is not going to go very far at the 2010 World Cup.

When a team loses a crucial international match due to shortcomings that one half-baked football writer off in the boondocks of Yamanashi was able to spot and describe in precise detail before the competition even started, it doesnt say much about the team's capacity for introspection and self-improvement. Osim has only had 10 months to work with this team, and it is a foregone conclusion that he is not going to be relieved of his job over one unfortunate result.

But if Osim doesnt take this result as a serious slap in the face and an irrefutable sign that he has misplaced his faith in many of the team's central players, then three more years isnt going to help.

The clearest sign of how bad the problems are in the Japan NT is that we can lift critiques we made months ago from old match reports and nobody will notice that they were not intended to refer to the match against Saudi Arabia. One popular definition of "insanity" is when a person performs exactly the same actions over and over, and somehow expects them to have a different result. Osim fielded PRECISELY the same starting lineup in every match of this tournament. His substitutions were virtually identical, to the point of always bringing the same substitute in for the same starting player. If that isnt crazy, then I dont know what is.

About the only difference between our past critiques and our post-mortem on the Saudi Arabia match would be that Akira Kaji managed to turn in a performance that leaves him above criticism. Indeed, Kaji may have put in his best performance ever in a Japan NT uniform, showing the sort of effort and determination that the rest of the team clearly lacked. However, Kaji's sudden display of form was more than offset by Shunsuke Nakamura, who had what would have to qualify as one of his worst matches ever.Naohiro Takahara also was visibly out of form. Yet there was never any sign that Osim was capable of recognising when a player is having a bad day.

The most stunning example of Osim"s Zico-like failure to overcome personal preference and make decisions based on football logic rather than favoritism was provided in the 75 minute of this contest, when -- faced with a hard-pressing, extremely physical and astute but rapidly tiring opponent, he went to the bench and brought on . . . . Naotake Hanyu.

If there has ever been player in Japan NT history who was LESS capable of holding the ball against physical pressure, I cant remember them. Was this substitution intended as deliberate capitulation? or was it just a joke that was supposed to leave national team fans rolling on the floor with laughter.

Regardless of which is the case, its time for Osim to wake up and start doing HIS job, instead of trying to save his son's job. Three more years of this tomfoolery is more than we can tolerate.