The Japan national team for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, which gets under way on the 12 June, opened up their training camp in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture on the 21st May.

Of the 23 complete squad, 20 of them, excluding forward Honda Keisuke, defender Nagatomo Yuto and goalkeeper Kawashima Eiji, assembled and started their practice, adding their training partners, Sugimori Koki and Sakai Daisuke, under a sunny summer-esque day for just over two hours.

During the 20 minutes at the start of the practice session that was open to the media, players as forward Okubo Yoshito, midfielder Yamaguchi Hotaru and defender Uchida Atsuto worked on their formations to confirm their collective moves without using the ball.

"Conditioning is the most important thing," Okazaki Shinji said after the practice. "We will build the basement as a team and then proceed from there. It will be a period for us to develop our mind-set once again for the World Cup."

Defender Konno Yasuyuki said: "We don't want to waste any single day for the World Cup. We would like to recall what we do as the team."

The team received enthusiastic welcomes by many fans at the Kagoshima airport before they arrived in Ibusuki. And they were also greeted by Ito Yuichiro, governor of Kagoshima Prefecture, and Toyodome Etsuo, mayor of the Ibusuki city, at the field before e their practice. While the Japan team was presented some local products, such as black berkshire and dried bonito shavings, they were also given folded-paper cranes by local elementary school students for praying the best wishes in the World Cup.

"Some staff and players who have stayed over here before told me that this is a good place, so we have decided to hold a training camp here. There's a saying, 'a good beginning makes a good ending,' and it was a good start for us," Japan coach Alberto Zaccheroni said.

Team Japan plans to have the training camp there until the 25th. They are scheduled to play a warm-up games against Cyprus at Saitama Stadium 2002 in the 2014 Kirin Challenge Cup on the 27th, and leaves Japan on the 29th. Then they hold another training camp in Florida, the United States before they enter Brazil, the stage for the World Cup.

Comments

ALBERTO Zaccheroni, Head Coach
We were able to hold a good training session today and I could see that everybody was motivated. I got to see (Hasebe, Uchida and Yoshida, who have all just recovered from injuries) for the first time in a while, but I felt that they looked just fine. In this training camp, we are going to review what we do as the national team while we intend to tune up the players' physical conditions. The conditions are different depending on the player, but we want to grasp each player's condition and get to work on as many thing as we can here. We plan to ask for speed and elaboration in our training camps in the United States and Itu, and it will be important for us to have proper conditions before that. Our intention is to have the best condition with sharpness for our first game in the World Cup.

KAGAWA  Shinji（Manchester United／England）
We only have a month until our first game in the World Cup, and we will have to develop our fundamental physicality. We have assembled here and are getting in the mode that we are going toward the World Cup. The tournament is where it is important for the team to win, not for individual to showcase themselves. We just want to do what we have to do with the teammates that were selected. I don't think that we have to change our Japanese way of football to possess the ball and get the opponents off-balance with our combinations plays any more.

YAMAGUCHI Hotaru（Cerezo Osaka）
We have kept playing games and now we don't have many games to play any more until the World Cup, so we want to avoid having bad conditions and injuries. It will be important for us to raise our conditioning and technical parts, putting up the best we can from the practices.

Schedule

 ※Local Time