The 5th -8th place playoff of the 12th Delle Nazioni Tournament
2015-4-29 (Wed.) - 17:00    Playing time: 80min (40min ×2)
Ajdovscina(Ajdovscina, Slovania)

U-16 Japan National Team 2-1 (1st 0-0, 2nd 0-0) U-16 Croatia National Team

Scores
5' Goal against (Croatia)
17' NAKAMURA Shunta (Japan)
53' NAKAMURA Shunta (Japan)

Line-ups
GK: TAKASE Kazuna
DF: TANAKA Riku, KEMMOTSU Takumu, HASHIOKA Daiki, NAKAYA Yuki
MF: SUMIDA Sho, FUJIMOTO Kanya, YOSHIDA Shun, NAKANO Yuta
FW: HASHIMOTO Jin, NAKAMURA Shunta

Substitutes
GK: WAKAHARA Tomoya
DF: SENBA Taishi, NAKAGAWA So, TANAKA Kosuke
MF: HIRAKAWA Rei, ITO Hiroki, SATO Subaru
FW: SUGIURA Fumiya, TAGAWA Kyosuke

80' NAKAMURA Shunta → HIRAKAWA Rei

Match Report

Japan, who were second in the group league, entered the 5th-8th placement tournament and played against Croatia in their first game.

Five minutes into the game, Japan lost the ball after they made a careless passing mistake by their defensive line and allowed Croatia to have a counter attack. Croatia wound up scoring a goal. But on 17th minute, Japan got the ball in the mid-field and moved it in the right side. And then Sumida Sho draw some defenders of the opponents and passed it to Tanaka Riku, who ran into a space in the right side. Tanaka launched a one-touch cross into the middle, and Nakamura Shunta netted it into the goal with a header to tie the contest at 1 all before the first half ended.

In the second half, Japan increased opportunities to rob the ball with their collective defensive moves in the Croatia territory, having more occasions to end their attacks with shots. On 53rd, Sumida, who had the ball in the middl of the opponents' territory, sent a floating pass to Nakamura behind the Croatia defensive line by seeing his move. Nakamura became one-on-one with the Croatia goalkeeper and composedly made a shot to take a lead for Japan.

Japan kept their momentum afterward, moving the ball and creating some other critical scoring chances. But they weren't able to extend their lead as they lacked accuracy on their shots. After tall, the game ended as it was and Japan won 2-1.
As Japan beat Croatia, they now will face England, who they'd taken on in the group stage, in the fifth-place match on 1 May in their final game of the tournament.

The match detail (Japanese version only) 

Players' Comments

SUMIDA Sho (Nagoya Grampus Under-18)
I came in the game today with the awareness of playing seeing the opposing players and playing moving around. As a team, we gave up a goal first but ended up winning in the end, and it was great. Individually, I thought it was good that I was able to play with the mind-set to go forward, but I wasn't strong enough physically in battling for the ball and couldn't keep playing with the same momentum throughout and those wound up being my issues. We have one more game to play and in order to play sharing the same image with the team and win it, I would like to prepare from now.

KENMOTSU Takumu (Shimizu S-Pulse Junior Youth)
We gave up a goal early from our own mistake, but we rebuilt from that point with the entire team and played, and we can give ourselves a compliment. As a team, we had too much distance between our defenders and mid-field players and weren't able to exchange our passes well. We eventually fixed it during the game and could have passes that would start our attacks. Individually, I lost some focus and made some passing mistakes in the second half, so I would like to play, keeping my concentration until the very end.

NAKAMURA Shunta (Kashiwa Reysol U-18)
Even before the game, I had a strong determination to score a goal and that's how I entered the game. Regarding my goal in the first half, I had a very good cross from Tanaka Riku from the right side, and I could put it in with composure. That actually relaxed me even more and I could play with composure. After all, I could score two goals, but I had even more chances to score, so I want to make critical shots even more. In the one last game, I would like to share our thoughts with our teammates and play how we want to play until the end.

Schedule

*Local time

The 12th Delle Nazioni Tournament

Future Schedule