On Saturday 6 August, the 3rd All Japan Youth (U-18) Futsal Tournament had its quarter-final and semi-final matches at Xebio Arena Sendai and Sendai City Gymnasium both in Miyagi Prefecture. The two rivals in the same group of the first round, Footboze Futsal U-18 (Kanto 1 / Tokyo) and Teikyo Nagaoka High School (Hokushinetsu / Niigata), made their way to the final match.

At the first quarter-final held at Xebio Arena Sendai, Takamatsu Commercial High School (Shikoku / Kagawa) defeated Yasu High School (Kansai 1 / Shiga) 3-1 to reach their first Last four spot only at the second ever tournament appearance. The following match saw two teams from the same Kanto region collide, as Footboze took on Chuogakuin High School (Kanto 2 / Chiba). The same matchup as the Kanto qualifiers final turned out to be Footboze’s 4-0 rout over Chuogakuin.

On the other side of the quarter-final contests at Sendai City Gymnasium had Hokuseigakuen Univ. High School (Hokkaido 1) take the pitch against Sakuyo High School (Chugoku 2 / Okayama) in the first match. With constant substitutions, Sakuyo interchangeably utilised two formations; leaving only one player up front and having all the four players lined up horizontally.

In the fifth minute, they opened scoring with MIZUSHIMA Ryo’s goal. While Hokuseigakuen with their solid defence and quick offence tied the match and took the lead once, in the 26th minute Mizushima again scored for Sakuyo to even the scoring. Then in the 38th, Sakuyo’s IWANAMI Sota caught a long feed and put it home to put his team up one more time. That goal eventually turned out to be the match-winner to move Sakuyo HS ahead to the semi-final. In the second quarter-final held at the same gym, Teikyo Nagaoka HS won a scoring spree of eight total goals scored and put down Kushiro Konan High School (Hokkaido 3) for their first ever semi-final appearance.

In the semi-final between Footboze and Takamatsu Commercial HS, the first half finished with Takamatsu Commercial’s two-goal lead. Fourteen minutes into the second half, desperate Footboze had FP OKABE Naoki score back one goal after he had a defender on his back and turned around for a shot. Then they went on to power-play late in the half, which successfully net Okabe’s equaliser from the left in the 20 minutes of the second half. The match moved on to penalty shootouts. Footboze’s goalkeeper NOZAWA Takumi denied Takamatsu Commercial’s first kicker. On the other hand, Footboze converted all of the first three attempts, which gave them the 3-2 shootout victory and one of the spots in the final match.

The other semi-final contest held at Sendai City Gymnasium were fought by the two teams who had made appearances in each of the past three All-Japan Youth Futsal Tournaments. Teikyo Nagaoka HS, having never reached the final yet, led the way in the first half with the score of 3-1.

Sakuyo HS had NISHIMOTO Taiki cut the deficit to one goal early in the second half, but struggled to tie the match after that. Both teams put quick intense pressure on the ball, while Teikyo Nagaoka relied on individual skills to move the ball and Sakuyo tried to take advantage of teamwork to dodge the opponents’ pressure.

After the stretch of thrilling seesaw battle, Teikyo Nagaoka’s SAITO Hyuga tallied a goal to extend the team’s lead to two again. Despite Sakuyo’s one more goal minutes later, Teikyo Nagaoka defeated the defending champions 4-3 and advanced to the final.

On the tournament's final day of 7 August, the final and the third-place matches will be held. The final between Footboze and Teikyo Nagaoka HS to be kicked off at 13:30 at Xebio Arena Sendai will witness the first-time champions, whichever team come out with the win.

Coach and Players' Comments

UENO Kohei, Assistant Coach (Hokusei Gakuen Univ. High School)
My players showed 100% of their ability. I have no regrets and I truly feel that we had a very valuable experience here. I used to play futsal professionally in China, so I want to promote futsal in Japan more. By helping this team win and advance, I wanted to let people feel “Futsal is fun.” I have incorporated futsal skills into our football practice, for example fake moves to get unguarded. I want to keep those efforts more. I think we played very well in terms of our preparation for the All Japan High School Tournament as well.

SHIKANAI Tomu (Hokusei Gakuen Univ. High School)
It is good that we have come this far as one united team. The ball is different and the environment is also different between football and futsal, so it has been fairly difficult. Through this tournament, I learned the importance of never giving it up until the very end and of being confident. This experience can work well for me in football as well. This big audience made me nervous, but I am still a second grader and I want to come back to this tournament next year. For that, I learned that I still need more practice. I will get more skills and improve my dribbling by practising and I want to be a player who can make a difference in matches.

FUJINO Masato, Coach (Hokkaido Kushiro Konan High School)
Our game plan is always to defend thoroughly and score by counter-attacks, but we failed to finish our plays. If we had added up scores in the chances we had in the first half, we could have made the opponents panic. In the second half, our stamina started to run out and we showed our fatigue in the end. Even so, I still think we played our best match so far.

At every match from regional qualifiers, our team got better and better. It was already decided that our third graders would finish playing after this tournament. So I really wanted to help them win one more and go back to Xebio Arena. It took about ten hours from Hokkaido to Sendai by train, but during that ride all our players studied. I am very proud of my players and it’s very rare to have this kind of group of players together. I will ask them, “Haven’t you guys changed your mind that you would want to keep playing until the All Japan High School Tournament?” (Laughing).

SAITO Hyuga (Teikyo Nagaoka High School)
Our class had been labelled as “not so good” at football as well, so we worked more on running and putting strong ball pressure than we were doing last year. Futsal is different from football, but I am still happy that we have advanced to the final match. As we play each match, our movement and teamwork are getting better. We increase the amount of communication among players.

We don’t have many players on the bench, so it is tough stamina-wise, but I am happy to play a lot of futsal. In the semi-final, I think we successfully showed ball movement we regularly practice on, effective change of ball speed and effective change of running speed to lose defenders. One more win will bring us the national championship, so I am a little nervous. But I will do everything I can do and put out everything I have to win the championship.

YUASA Takuto (Sakuyo High School)
To be honest, I really wanted to win this match for the sake of my teammates who couldn’t be on the roster and who would finish their high school career after this tournament for the preparation for the college exam. We couldn’t have enough communication among us and we couldn’t take the momentum of the quarter-final win to the semi-final. We dig a hole deeper and deeper for ourselves by making simple mistakes.

Our style is to play the first half very safely and go aggressive in the second half. But early mistakes demoralised us and we were sucked into the opponents’ rhythm. We scored early in the second half, so we should have got one more after that. But we were missing the decisiveness. We want to most definitely win the third place match tomorrow.

The 3rd All Japan Youth (U-18) Futsal Tournament

Thu. 4 August - Sun. 7 August 2016
XEBIO ARENA SENDAI, Sendai City Gymnasium / Miyagi
More information
JFA-TV (Japanese version only)