England trip　Training Match 1st　vs．Birmingham City U-18
2015-11-12 (Thu.) - 12:30　Playing Time: 90min. (45min.×2) 
Liverpool FC Academy (Liverpool, England)

U-18 Japan National Team　1-1 (1-0, 0-1)　Birmingham City U-18

Scores
8'　DOAN Ritsu (U-18 Japan National Team)
47'　Goal against (Birmingham City U-18)

1st
GK: KOJIMA Ryosuke
DF: HASEGAWA Takumi, OKANO Jun, TOMIYASU Takehiro, FUNAKI Kakeru
MF: DOAN Ritsu, SASAKI Takumi, WATANABE Kouta, KUBOTA Kazune
FW: KISHIMOTO Takeru, SUGIMORI Koki

2nd
GK: KATO Yuki
DF: YANAGI Takahiro, MATSUZAKA Dan, MORISHITA Reiya, URATA Itsuki
MF: MIYOSHI Koji, WATANABE Kouta, ITO Hiroki, NAGANUMA Yoichi
FW: KATO Mutsuki, ITO Ryotaro

68'　WATANABE Kouta → TOMIYASU Takehiro

Match Report

The third day of the England trip had a practice match against Birmingham City U-18.

Japan took the initiative of the match early. Moving around the ball and pushing it toward the opponent’s end, in the 8th minute SASAKI’s pass was met by DOAN around the penalty box, who took the ball, passed by a defender and left-footed it for the opener. Japan scored the first goal early in the match. They kept taking the pace of the match, creating more goal-scoring opportunities. The first half, however, ended with the score remaining as 1-0.

Japan replaced the entire lineup except WATANABE for the second half, but the substitutions did not bring favourable result. In the 47th minute, defensive miscommunications allowed the opponents to feed a vertical pass to their forward player, who took it up with his dribble and fired a shot. Goalkeeper KATO once denied it, but the rebounding ball was put into the back of the net to tie the match. Although Japan regained the control of the match and had many chances to score, their shots were not able to found their accuracy before the match ended with a 1-1 tie.

Tomorrow, another practice match is scheduled against the Liverpool FC U-18, which are a well-known powerhouse in the England Premier League.

Players' Comments

WATANABE Kouta (Tokyo Verdy Youth)
This is my first time to be called to this U-18 National Team as nervous in the beginning. I started to get used to it and then we had this match today. I made mistakes, but I think I could play aggressively. The result was draw, but we still have two more matches to play. So we make sure to get prepared for them.

ITO Ryotaro (Sakuyo High School)
For this match, my focus was effectively sharing my decisions with my teammates. In offence, we went closer to goal, but our shots didn’t have accuracy and failed to score goals. So I thought we needed to improve our accuracy. What I thought about our defence was that everyone needed more of hard work and we needed to be a team that can connect good defence with scoring goals. Otherwise we can’t match up against good teams in the world. Actually we had some good plays that worked well against bigger foreign players, so we need to make those even better.

HASEGAWA Takumi (Albirex Niigata U-18)
In the end we couldn’t close out this first match of our England trip. We could create many scoring opportunities, but both our team and I lacked accuracy in shots and passes leading to shots. So we couldn’t add up goals. We still have two more games, so we will improve accuracy in each play to be able to close out matches. We want to make good preparations.

OKANO Jun (JEF United Chiba U-18)
I am happy to be selected again to this national team. This was the first match of our trip so we wanted to win and get on good momentum. But we couldn’t do it and it’s disappointing. Defensively I didn’t do a good job individually in making small decisions here and there, so I want to improve it during this trip. I want to keep trying my best for the rest of the two matches to show the best of my ability and secure my position on this national team.

Schedule

Note: All training, training matches and friendly take place with doors closed.