They put themselves under the fire with the loss against UAE at home. The play wasn't impressive in any of the games and with two losses it isn't so easy to advance to the WC (though there were few - 3 if I remember it well - when such things happened in this format). Had they won three of the first games and drew against Australia away it wouldn't happen. Even with the level of the games similar to what they showed. Now Halil will be under this huge pressure from the press until they will secure the place in WC or they will destroy it all against Saudi Arabia and there will be hell.
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20161018-00000103-sph-socc Train with Halil! Daniel Schmidt ended up in hospital with pain in the left ankle in the last day of the camp. Matsumoto supporters must be extatic in this moment.
The japanese internet will never digest his 190cm GK remark lolz, so many articles and bashing threads about it.
Vahid announced the squad for the Oman friendly and WCQ vs Saudi Arabia. GK: Nishikawa, Kawashima, Higashiguchi DF: G. Sakai, H. Sakai, Nagatomo, Makino, Yoshida, Morishige, Maruyama, Ueda MF: Hasebe, Yamaguchi, Ideguchi, Nagaki, Kagawa, Kiyotake, Yuki Kobayashi FW: Honda, Asano, Haraguchi, Saito, Osako, Okazaki, Kubo
It should be added that two of these players will not go on the bench.... Ideguchi and Kubo are the most likely candidate I guess. I am not sure if you can leave out 2 different players against Oman and then other 2 against Saudi Arabia? Anyone knows? The changes: - Ota was dropped (has not played much with his club) - Kashiwagi and Oshima were dropped, Kobayashi and Ideguchi in - Yu Kobayashi and Muto were dropped again, mostly because they are injured, and Usami was dropped. Saito recalled and Osako, Kubo in.
Of course you can switch players out, the Oman match is a friendly and Saudi Arabia is a WCQ. Even if they were both qualification matches you could send players home and call up reinforcements for the 2nd match. Vahid mentioned that Saito may see some time against Oman, indicating that he wants to test out some of the newcomers to see if they're ready to contribute in a competitive, high-stakes situation first.
Urawa won the championship and - of course - Komai, Sekine, Ugajin and Endo are out. Plus, how reliable can be a manager who calls someone who's not making the BENCH in Ligue 1?
But there's Ideguchi! I don't know what for but he's there! And Kawashima is there only because he knows French. Nakamura should be there of course.
Eiji is indeed a joke. Ideguchi has been incredible in september-october, why not? Might as well get a go against Oman Nagaki is the weird call but he's a good passer I guess...
Honestly who gives a shit who gets called up as 3rd GK, speaking French is a good enough reason. You want to avoid weird communication issues like Stielike talking past his players through his (Spanish - why??) interpreter. As for getting younger GKs training/match experience, friendlies + special sessions like the recent GK camp are useful. Remember Kawaguchi was on the plane to South Africa...
Well, from what I've read this morning many fans are considering this move as giving him a 'credit' call up without serious abilities for the work.
Kawashima is there because he's a veteran presence, a leader, he doesn't even speak French that well. He's the third keeper anyway so it's not that big of a deal, if Nakamura gets in the team he should automatically jump to number 1. Other than Maruyama/Morishige/Makino I'm satisfied with the team. (Oshima is also injured)
there's definitely something about that too, but I disagree. If he has a shot to rack up a few minutes against Oman, we'll see what he's made (or not made) of
Vahid clearly said he likes his game, his willingness to go forward and his ability to shoot so nothing to do with a credit call up. Majster is just cooking is usual Gamba-hate .
I will believe after some of the boys coming from Osaka will mean something in NT. So far the only ones are in the past decade were Honda (who has nothing to do with both clubs from there) and... nah, Kagawa is from Kyoto and he never won 'the most popular boy in school' contest there. There's always much hype about them but they never live up to expectations. I wonder why...
I don't know but maybe hyping them up before they show anything out of ordinary on the pitch and they use that 'charm' out of the pitch and they won't get scolded by the fans when they're out in the city at night? Because 20 years old guy is just a... boy? I don't know...