The Japan national Under-22 team entered the third day of their training camp at the Japanese school in Malaysia.
The team had had two-a-day practices in the previous two days, and went through menus that emphasized on adjusting to the hot weather and recovering despite of the severe weather with a temperature of 33.5 degrees and humidity of 61 percent from the morning. The players warmed up playing football tennis in the first portion and the had recovery training at the school's swimming pool. They attempted to tune up for their upcoming game, while having relaxed expressions on their faces.

In the afternoon session, they began it with a six-man passing and controlling practice for warming up, and then went through practical menus for 90 minutes, such as 3+3-on-3 possession practice, 1-on-1 individual practice and 9-on-9 possession practice. For the 1-on-1 practice, both offensive players and defensive players matched up physically showing a lot of emotions. After the practice, YOSHINO Kyohei of Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who had to leave the team due to an injury, spoke to the team, telling his spiritual thoughts to his teammates as he left Malaysia. After the dinner time, the team had a meeting, which was the first one on the trip. They checked on their team concepts and tactics by watching their recent game against the Myanmar Under-22 squad. The team was scheduled to only have a practice in the afternoon on the next day. The latter portion of it would be spent for a practical game-style training inviting a local club REAL MALIA FC.

The Japan team has eight more days to go until their first match in the AFC Under-23 Championship qualifying, which also serves as the first Olympic qualifier), against Macau.

Comments

FW 14 ARANO Takuma（Consadole Sapporo）
The 11 March was the day it'd been exactly four years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and it was relieving for us to have brought the victory with the entire team as we came in it trying to send some energy to the victims by winning it. Individually, I wasn't really able to get involved in scoring plays and that's my issue. There's a lot of members on this team that I've played with for a long time so we have a good mood. But like our game against Iraq and Korea in the Asian Games, in terms of winning against those tougher opponents, we will have to grow even more. As we are getting in the first qualifier, I want to have a good preparation so I can contribute to the team by making decisive jobs when I get onto the pitch. And we hope to go back to Japan by taking all the three games.

DF 2 MATSUBARA Ken（Albirex Niigata）
We have to deal with the heat and humidity in Malaysia, but I've gradually gotten used to it physically. In our game against Myanmar on 11 March, we held them to zero goals and individually I was able to make an assist while playing in the whole 90 minutes, so it was good. And on the day of the Great East Japan Earthquake, we played the game in Japan and realized how fortunate it was. We have severe matches ahead, but in order to overcome those, we are going to need to play as a team. We would like to be on the same page for them.

Schedule

Local time