Tomorrow's game (today's to be precise) is taking place at sea level, I am expecting a better performance from both teams.
Napster wrote:P.S. Maybe Uchida should play instead of the other RB?
I think it's more a fitness issue than a tactical choice. Komano is an excellent crosser of the ball and he has some powerful strikes but that's all. Konno is more useful in midfield than in defense.
As far I remember, Uchida negated Robben during their friendly, I would like to see him playing too.
Actually, Japan completely dominated that game for nearly 60 minutes displaying their notorious lovely 1-touch passing, the team practiced a very fluid and fast football thanks to its world class midfielders but they dramatically fallen apart in the last 30 minutes conceding 3 goals. Fitness (and mentality) let them down. 3 - 0 . Large but undeserved (By De Boer's own words) victory for Netherlands.
Not sure how they're going to approach tomorrow's game. They didn't really played like "themselves" Vs Cameroon, the victory was more like a result of the solidity of their defensive line and generosity in the effort than anything else. Well, an ugly 3 pts are still 3 pts.
Napster wrote:That Endo is very good player.
Was very good with the NT lately despite the dreadful season of his club, he holds somewhat an ungrateful defensive role that prevents him from displaying the "
full" potential of his creativity, but he contributes a lot to the quality and stability of the midfield. Yuki Abe has been fantastic too in his role as a sort of "highly positioned" sweeper playing slightly in front of the defensive line, perfect link between defense and midfield, highly accurate passing and a lot of recovered balls.
Napster wrote:Japan has a very good team although they don't have a "good" striker.
As usual, the attack is the biggest problem of the team, if they naturalized a guy like Marquinhos it would have solved their problems in this area and the team would be very hard to stop.
Okazaki was surprisingly dropped from the starting eleven beacuse he wasn't too convincing in friendlies but he remains a very interesting player if given good balls. Morimoto is a more than decent striker, he should really have his chance as I believe he has a lot to offer.
Yano is definitely not "World Cup material". (wtf is he doing there at first place ?
). Tamada is a good a mix of a creative attacking midfielder/striker but he passed his prime and he isn't too good lately, at least goal-scoring wise. His experience might be useful but only as a joker to change the course of particularly tight games.
But Okada really wants to steal "the show" from Domenech, he left Sato (
very smart and highly efficient goal poacher despite his small size) and Maeda at home (
only 8 units away from scoring his 100 th goal in J-League but no International experience that worths to be mentioned yet, how it could be even possible ? 
Scoring nearly 100 goals in your domestic goals without being picked to play for the NT !) while they could have been of a huge help to the team, it would have at least spared us the disgrace of seeing a midfielder playing alone as a forward.
Okubo (holding more the role of an
SMF/
WG) is clearly one of the most limited players in this squad (technically wise, passing skills...etc) but I truly admire his die-hard attitude, continuous harassment of adversaries and non-stop movement tiring the opposition. I must say he earned his place thanks to his efforts but yet again we had
FAR better options, Okada is only exploiting something like 65 % of the talent available in J-League and that's really frustrating despite the positive start.
Well, I wouldn't care that much if the team takes a beating against the Dutch as long they make their way to the next stage. Avoiding injuries/suspensions is also an important matter in this game.
Alberto Zaccheroni
Standard de Liège
Sanfrecce Hiroshima
Stuttgart
Southampton
CSKA Moscow
Vitesse
:
I really wanna see this guy.
