The Japan national team went through a closed-door practice except the first 15 minutes at a field in Brisbane on 14 January two days ahead of their second match against Iraq at the AFC Asian Cup 2015.

SAMURAI BLUE have earned three points along with Iraq and stood atop the group by the goal difference. If they win over Iraq on 16th and Palestine draw or lose to Jordan in the other match, Japan can seal one of the top-two places in Group D and advance to the quarter-finals before their final match in their group.

At the beginning of the practice, while 20 field players worked on passing and stretching drills in groups of five each, three goalkeepers warmed up with kicking and running along with their coach. After that, the Japan side deliberately reviewed their tactics for an hour with closed doors.

There is a different type of heat here in Brisbane today compared to New Castle where the team had their first match. It was cloudy here with some shower before and after the practice unlike New Castle. Gamba Osaka midfielder Endo Yasuhito said “It was cool in the last practice site, so we feel a bit more heat here. But we all have the experience playing in such climate. The condition is the same for the opponents, and I don’t feel uncomfortable.” He added “If we can make them run a lot, it could slow them down.”

As the opposing Iraq had their first win over Jordan here in Brisbane, they have had more time to get used to the match environment. But defender Sakai Gotoku of VfB Stuttgart expressed his confidence, saying “We don’t need to take it as a disadvantage but just need to do what we’re supposed to do to get used to the environment. Anyway, we all are capable of coping with it.”

On a side note, the Japan Football Association has announced that Japan will have a friendly against Uzbekistan on 31 March at the Kirin Challenge Cup 2015. Shimoda Masahiro, Chairman of Technical Committee (Development), explained how and why they came to set up the match. “The FIFA World Cup Qualifiers will begin in June. Coach Aguirre requested us a friendly against Asia’s top teams before the qualifiers,” he said.

Comments

MF  KAGAWA Shinji (Borussia Dortmund)
The Iraq match will be totally different from the last match and will be a tough contest, so we need to play aggressively from the start. We will get together to stick to it. Iraq beat Jordan. The match will be important because it’s going to be between teams who already got one win. We’ve got to concentrate on it. I know I’m expected to get a goal, and I will always try to take shots.

DF  YOSHIDA Maya (Southampton FC)
How we play against Iraq is basically not different from the Palestine match. What we will do is to possess the ball as much as possible, add up goals from different kinds of attacking patterns and carry out risk management in defence. We will fine-tune accuracy of cross balls and improve our defence against set plays because we had some dangerous situations in the last match, and hopefully we can get through the group stage in the next match. Now it’s important for us to play how our coach wants the team to play in every match we play, keep making it even better and continue that afterwards.

DF  SAKAI Gotoku (VfB Stuttgart)
The next will be completely different from the last opponents. We need to gear up for the totally different match, and that’s already begun from today’s practice. A high-level team like Iraq definitely make it through easy mistakes, so we’ve got to lessen them. Both as a team and as an individual, cross ball accuracy wasn’t so good. We will send cross balls with more care. Risk management is important against opposing counter-attacks, and closing our attacks with a shot or a cross ball is also important. We will look carefully at opposing approaches and play on various patterns.

MF  ENDO Yasuhito (Gamba Osaka)
In the last match, we didn’t have so many opportunities that we allowed opponents to attack, so we didn’t have so many things to improve in defence. But we had a couple things to improve in offence. We will try to improve the quality of it little by little. Iraq also want to win the next and add their points to six. We’ve got to play not to let them play to their strengths. There should be some situations where the match stays quiet. It’s important to keep ourselves in control playing the match. We will keep the ball as much as possible so that we can make opponents run. By doing that, that may influence them in the final 20 minutes of the match partly because of the heat. Keeping that in mind, I hope we can manage time in our favour throughout 90 minutes.

JFA-TV (Japanese version only)

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