ITALY Tour 2014 Training Match 2nd Game

Mon. 6 October 2014 Kickoff 19:00 20min x 2
Palaroma(Pescara, Italy)

Futsal Japan National Team 2-1 (1st 0-0, 2nd 2-1) Montesilvano

Scores
22min WATANABE Tomoaki (Futsal Japan National Team)
29min INABA Kotaro(Bardral Urayasu Futbol Sala)
32min Goal against (Montesilvano)

Starters
GK：FUJIWARA Jun
FP：MORIOKA Kaoru,INABA Kotaro,MINAMOTO Akira,YOSHIKAWA Tomoki

Substitutes
GK：SEKIGUCHI Yushi
FP：ARAMAKI Taro, SATO Toru, WATANABE Tomoaki, TAKITA Manabu, NAGAI Yoshifumi, KATO Ryuma, KITAJIMA Yuichi, MORI Shuta

Match Report

Japan National Futsal Team took on Serie A2 team Montesilvano on 6th during their Italy trip.
Japan had trouble with Montesilcano’s defence who sat back in their end, failing to create chances despite their high-percentage ball possession, and the score remained at zero until the interval.

Two minutes after the break, when Watanabe Tomoaki received Minamoto Akira’s long pass from the other side, his first-time shot put it into the back of the net to open the scoring. Seven minutes later, as the opposition added up fouls, Inaba found the net from the second penalty spot on the sixth foul to make it 2-0.

After Japan gave up a goal, Montesilvano made a power play three minutes from time. But Japan managed to hold on to notch a 2-1 win, which gave them the second straight win following the first match.

Comments

Miguel Rodrigo, Head Coach
As you can see it on the scoreline, the match was very tight. In the first half, because the opposition’s defence was intense, we had trouble finding a way to attack and we couldn’t create scoring opportunities. As our vertical passes didn’t get through, we ended up remaining attacking slow. But we had the superior possession and took the complete initiative. After the opening goal in the second half, the pace of the match changed dramatically. As the opposing defensive line came forward, there were spaces that emerged in the opposing end, and Japan’s possession futsal started taking effect. In the last minutes, we suffered the opposing power play, but it was a great experience. Though the today’s opposition was a team belonging to the second division, their level was as high as the first one from the first division. It was good that we could put up the good result against such an opposition, and players must get confidence out of it.

FUJIWARA Jun (Bardral Urayasu Futbol Sala)
Following the first match two days ago and one day break, we could take the initiative throughout the match today. Meanwhile, I could try to do today’s goleiro job best concentrating on denying their counter-attacks and not giving up the initiative. I believe I could do that. But we allowed the opponents to put a shot into the goal through pivo. That’s one thing that we need to improve and a key point when we have an upcoming match against a strong club for the rest of the Italy trip. When we had a match and watched a league match on the day-off, I felt a lot of Italian teams feed the ball to pivo with their individual skills and physical intensity. We will talk with each other in the team not to allow such plays in the upcoming matches, and I hope we can make the rest of four matches valuable.

MINAMOTO Akira (Fuchu Athletic F.C.)
Today we dominated the match and the opposition played on counter-attacks. We could take the initiative for the most of the time but couldn’t break through the Italian big-sized defence that stayed in front of goal. I felt we need to once more compile the way to capitalise players who can play one-on-on and to quickly play afterwards. The opposition played just on counter-attacks and pivo attacks with no creativity and no threatening players, so we could cope with their attacks. We have played against teams who put more focus on playing individually so far. If we don’t get behind in terms of that, we can dominate the opponents with our collective play and tactics. So first of all, we will work hard not to lose individual fights.

Schedule

*Local time
*The schedule is subject to change without notice due to team condition and the weather.