After beginning its season on 12 April, the Prince Takamado Trophy U-18 Football League 2015 Premier League WEST entered a one-month-and-half break on 10 May and will resume its season on 27 June. Kansai Youth Sub Director Matsuda Hiroshi looks back the six Premier League EAST matchdays, one-third of the whole season.

What high-scoring contests mean

Compared to the same timing of the last season, after one-third of all matches, my impression is that the matches were a bit more unsophisticated. There were five matches (17%) where one team scored five or more goals through the matchday 6 among all the 30 fixtures played. The 8-4 match between Vissel Kobe U-18 and Nagoya Grampus U18 saw the most goals scored. There were two 6-1 matches, and a few other matches also ended at 5-3 or 5-0.

Last year, the only one match ended at 5-0 (4%) after five matchdays (25 matches), and there was no match where one team scored six or more goals. It may be hard to clearly conclude the reason at this moment after six matchdays, but I want to look for a couple of factors by analysing goal-scoring moments and after-match comments from coaches.

Goal-scoring is not a negative thing itself. With wishful thinking, this trend may be solving the Japan's weakness of a lack of decisiveness, but it is too early to think so.

At least, we can view it as the sign of them playing aggressively and showing their commitment to a goal and attacks. It might be affected by one of the trends of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, which was quick, vertical counterattacks after winning possession. We can take it positively that they hungrily commit to a goal if there is any chance.

As found in coaches' after-match comments, some of their goal they gave up were results of plays aggressively checking the ball instead of backing off to defend. Some other factors could be a lack of coordination in defence and insufficient understanding of defensive tactics because of the period when it was just the beginning of the new season and they just started a new team. I hope those try and error plays lead to consolidation of aggressive defence to win the ball out.

Analysing the goals they conceded, however, the cause was clearly not teamwork, but rather individual (easy) mistakes in many cases. Especially, they conceded a goal in many occasions because of the final defensive line and goalkeeper's dismal performance against vertical, quick attacks (one-touch plays) as said in the offence section above. For example, they are unstable to cope with a long ball directly targeting at space behind the final line. That may be because such an attacking pattern was not really used in a match between J.League organisation's clubs. 

We can also see the final line was not able to make a composed judgement and handling against counterattacks as they prepared lazily during their side's attacks. So they panic and fail to manage the most dangerous space when a problem arises. Since such kinds of issue also emerged among SAMURAI BLUE (Japan National Team), who played the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, it is better to improve it early at this age group.

Need of tough mentality to pursue victory

One of the reasons why they ended up with having careless and high-scoring matches is that they conceded goals one after another. Although they kept the match as a close battle, they collapsed with one goal and gave up another soon, which decided the outcome. 

These are mostly due to the mental side. And their age group is already at one step away from adults. It is also the age when many players shine as an adult and as a professional, if you look at elite international players of this age group. With this in mind, I want them to develop tough mentality to pursue a victory by keeping their fighting spirit until the match ends.

When you get disappointed with one opposing goal and stop thinking about what you can do right then, you never get a chance to come back. It is indispensable to keep it in mind throughout a match what play leads to the best outcome at the end of the match, no matter what situation you are in.

Lose in a way leading to the next

I looked at the factors of high-scoring matches, the characteristics of the early stage of the Prince Takamado Trophy U-18 Football League 2015 Premier League WEST. Teams can take advantage of a loss for the next match in a league competition unlike tournaments with knockout system.

As the goal difference is a significant factor of placement, you do not want to concede a lot of goals. Each team has to analyse their own team from different perspectives and find out their issues by utilising the break period.

And I hope they implement planning and training for improvement and show the upgraded version of themselves in the battles after the league resumes the season at the end of June. I hope more heated, closer fights than before.