On Friday 20 May, U-23 Japan National Team had a workout from 15:00 in Toulon for their first match in the 44th Toulon Tournament against Paraguay on the next day. 

The contest is important for Japan looking to play in the Olympics in less than three months. Coach TEGURAMORI says to the team, “making mistakes in this tournament doesn’t take away our chances of winning a medal in the Olympics. We have nothing but opportunities ahead of us. Don’t fear anything and try to take advantage of them.” Apparently the message motivated his players even further and helped the practice run in good mood. 

The training on this day again started with preparation exercises to get warmed up. Then they moved on to passing drills in groups of five or six players and agility drills before engaging in a 2+7-on-7+2 possession drill and other formation drills to review their lifeline “speedy combination.” Lastly the team made sure detailed combination both offensively and defensively in a 1+8-on-8+GK scrimmage to wrap up the final workout before the match.

At the meeting after dinner, the team studied the Paraguay’s video in the previous day’s match against Guinea. Since Japan will face another South American team, Colombia, everyone focused on analysing the region’s football style. 

The touchstone match for Japan’s fortune in Rio de Janeiro is scheduled to kick off at 16:15 local time (23:15 Japan time) on Saturday 21.

Coach and Players' Comments

TEGURAMORI Makoto, Coach
Tomorrow we really go out and try to win. Paraguayan players have unique playing rhythm and also the team have craftiness which you can see in many South American teams. It’s up to how much we can maintain our focus and show our strength against such a team. This tournament is a real international match opportunity and tomorrow is the first match. This is what we really need to win. Japan must display our strength of playing collective football. It can be situational battles or combinations in front of the opponents’ goal, but multiple players get involved in plays and everyone moves collectively in transitions between offence and defence. In defence it’s either putting pressure on the ball or waiting and setting up a bloc. We want to play with a clear vision of what we want to do. 

This is an opportunity to get ourselves better and better, if we can succeed in taking advantage of these matches here to increase our confidence level. If we win those, that will come back to us as extra confidence. If we lose, it will be extra homework. I want my players to play without any hesitation. If my players don’t try to getter with their own intent, there will be no good results in Rio de Janeiro. 

FW #11  ASANO Takuma (Sanfrecce Hiroshima)
I have been excited about this tournament. If I get to play against Paraguay, I want to show everything I have. As a forward, what’s most important is a result called scoring goals. I haven’t scored any goals for this national team yet, so I want to help my team win with my goals. By playing through the Asian final qualifiers, this team got much better and we are now able to calm ourselves down and to close out matches. We want to take advantage of this tournament to improve ourselves even further by playing against various countries and winning matches. 

MF #16  NOTSUDA Gakuto (Albirex Niigata)
I am looking forward to the match tomorrow. I can’t wait for that. At the Ghana match on 11 May, I felt good about how I played and I also feel that we as a team are getting better considerably. I really can’t wait to go out and find out how much we can play in tomorrow’s match. We don’t have much time left before the Olympics and there are not many chances to show what we can individually do. So I want to leave a good result here to show how valuable I am on this team. My strength is mid-range shots more than anything. So I want to score goals that can singlehandedly create good momentum for my team during difficult stretches or at the time when our team are struggling. 

Schedule

*Local Time
*The schedule is subject to change due to the team condition, the weather, etc.