On 9 January three days before their opener at the AFC Asian Cup 2015, where they contend for the back-to-back title, SAMURAI BLUE started the first training in the host city New Castle.

The Japan National Team squad arrived in the city on the previous day from Cessnock where they had a training camp and enjoyed the welcome ceremony with full of local atmosphere such as native inhabitants’ dances. And today before the practice, they spent some time at the hotel near the ocean.

In the cloudy evening with comfortable breeze, the practice first had midfielder Endo Yasuhiro, forward Keisuke Honda and their teammates divided into groups, do some running and work on exchanging hard passes. After that, behind the closed-doors to the media, they went through more drills to review their tactics elaborately.
When the 90-minute practice session ended, the sun was already down. Head coach Javier Aguirre left the practice site with a spring in his step, calling out “Otsukaresama (Japanese good-bye greeting meaning “Thank you for your good work”) to the media.
Forward Kobayashi Yu said “I’m getting used to the hot temperature and getting through the training with a good feeling. In matches, first of all, I will keep running aggressively for the team.”

In the meanwhile, the host country Australia, placed in Group A, gained a 4-1 comeback win over Kuwait in the tournament opener in Melbourne.
Japan, drawn into Group D, will have their first match against Palestine on 12nd at New Castle Stadium, then take on Iraq in Brisbane on 16th and Jordan in Melbourne on 20th.

Top two teams of each group will advance to the knock-out round and keep playing heated contests at five venues in five east Australian cities all the way to the final match on 31 January.

Comments

DF SHOJI Gen (Kashima Antlers)
I’m happy that it’s cool today. The quality of the training is good, and everyone speaks aloud with a great concentration. As the first match is coming up soon, we’ve gradually got good tense and have a sense of unity. I’m enjoying the time here playing football at a high level. Our coach told us not to pull back the defensive line too much when coping with cross balls. Middle Eastern countries have an ability to score one goal on a counter-attack and protect that one goal lead, so we need to be careful of every single counter-attack. It’s important for our defence to cope with opponents who’ve got physical intensity and capability to change the course of a match individually. .

FW MUTO Yoshinori (FC Tokyo)
As the practice time moved to the evening, it became more comfortable to work out. This place is where we have the showdown. And I’m in good shape three days ahead of the game, so all I need to do is keep myself together. Not losing the mind-set to play active, I hope we can capitalise on my strengths and my teammates’ strengths together in the team. We are required to have our own intentions in every play at all moments. I will play the game fulfilling what our coach requires and showing my strengths.

FW INUI Takashi (Eintracht Frankfurt)
I’m still struggling with the heat when working out, but it’s not time to say that and it’s up to how we handle it. I want to help the team create more offensive opportunities, and if we can play our game, we don’t have any opponents we cannot beat in Asia. We’ve coordinated better combination plays, so as we play matches in the tournament, we will be able to have more good patterns. Our head coach is expecting only wins. To achieve that, he expects us to score goals, play collective defence and win matches as a team. We’ve worked out in a good mood, and we all definitely get out to win.

MF HONDA Keisuke (AC Milan)
Upcoming matches will be played in the hot climate, so you don’t want to expect a beautiful football and we also had better not expect it. You’ve got to lessen unnecessary mistakes so that you can create more chances. So it’s important to have a way of thinking that you lessen mistakes by playing a good football. Instead of thinking too much about how they start moving, the three attackers up front should position themselves at the best location at a given moment, so when you feed the ball to them, it turns to a scoring opportunity right there. We are required to show different things from when we were at the FIFA World Cup. Considering the heat, we should get in a match slowly at the AFC Asian Cup.

DF MORISHIGE Masato (FC Tokyo)
We haven’t got information about the opponents, but we can work on what we ourselves are supposed to do, and on top of that, we can get information about the opponents. I’ve gone through training always thinking about a match. I just got out of vacation after the J.League season, but I can get in better shape as we have games.

JFA-TV

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