Yes, it is pointless. I think AFC shall give a bye to teams which qualified to the previous WC or the top 5 teams in terms of FIFA ranking to the 3rd qualifying round. There is no point of making the likes Japan, South Korea, Iran, and Australia play against teams which even don’t have proper football league (let alone professional football league) and are ranked below 150. Asia’s top 4 teams almost managed to get past the second qualifying round with 100% or at least 75% record, sometimes this round witnessed double-digit scores, and sometimes only cautious play of the top 4 teams players prevent the scoreline of being double-digit and keep it respectable (as players from top 4 teams are cautious of getting injured by excessive physical challenges from lower teams’ players). As I said, I would rather see the top AFC teams given a bye into the 3rd qualifying round, or reduce the teams participating in the 2nd qualifying round from 40 to 24 or at least 32, which will mean improvement of the competition in this round, and we will not see the likes of Mongolia, Guam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Maldives play in this round, unless they improved and earn qualification to this round by knocking out stronger opponents in the first qualifying round.
it was moriyasu’s problem to call up osako and sakai for two meaningless games. what is there to gain by playing these two guys? high risk stupidity.
Japan’s squad for next week’s WCQs against Mongolia and Tajikistan: GK Kawashima Gonda Schmidt DF Nagatomo Yoshida H. Sakai N. Ueda Anzai Hatanaka Tomiyasu MF Haraguchi Shibasaki Endo J. Ito Hashimoto Nakajima Minamino Itakura Doan T. Kubo FW Nagai Asano Kamada Just 2 changes from last month’s squad, Osako and Musashi Suzuki are out, while Asano and Kamada are in. Again, no new faces, no experiments.
Yeah, he needs to test more options, there are even players from J2 who deserve a chance in JNT, for instance Takashi Kasahara, Hiroyuki Mae, Hiroto Goya. The brazilian coach recently called a second division player (Ivan from Ponte Preta) to the NT, why can't Moriyasu do the same?
I think including Haraguchi is a sort of a hierarchal issue and he will be dropped perhaps by next year, unless his form improves significantly.
He is not that kind of a coach it seems. Just take the "safe" cards, even though they dont deserve a call up everytime.
He's waiting for the time when JNT's officially qualified for this round. After that, he can try everything he wants.
nope. he will still call up the same players regardless. otherwise the kirin cup games would’ve seen new faces.
The drop in quality from the defense and midfield to the strikers is sad. Hopefully someone emerges in time for the next World Cup.
Any chance of Miyaichi getting called up? He is younger and has performed much better than Haraguchi in the same league.
Hopefully we will see the likes of Furuhashi and Nakagawa in the East Asian Championship, and a good performance there by them will pave the way for their selection and other J-Leaguers selection for the 4 qualifying matches in early 2020.
Japan has never had better and more options at the centre-back than now, with Tomiyasu, Shoji, and Yoshida all available. The striker position has been always a problem for Japan, while the midfield is solid. So what is your point?
This. Okada didn't call up European-based players in the first two games of the 2010 qualification. Huh....?
On the contrary I think this CBs generation will give Japan some chance to perform another amazing Okadesque WC in 2022. I agree that midfield lacks some replacements for the epic Hasebe+Endo duo but there are some interesting dudes out there, let's hope they'll improve in these 3 years/2.5 seasons. About the FWs, let's hope Osako will eat a lot of umeboshi (Nagatomo's secret panacea) and keep his form even at age32. Please stop talk about Miyaichi as a FB! He will be our Tamada-like supersub by 2022!
The backline is by far the most talented ever with the emergence of Tomiyasu. The attacking midfield is also very talented. Plus the chemistry between them is amazing unlike the Honda-kagawa era and it's like they've been teammates for years. The lack of forward depth is a concern but we have at least one Bundesliga starter. Imo the biggest problem is the defensive midfield. Going from Hasebe to Endo is a major downgrade. I was expecting Itakura to solve this situation but unfortunately he is starting as a centre back in the Netherlands. Hashioka should move to Europe asap.
Japan’s starting line-up vs. Mongolia GK: Gonda. DF: H. Sakai, Tomiyasu, Yoshida, Nagatomo. Central MF: Shibasaki, Endo. Attacking MF: Ito, Nakajima, Minamino. FW: Nagai. 【スタメン発表】GK権田DF長友 冨安 酒井 吉田MF遠藤 柴崎 南野 中島 伊東FW永井ワールドカップアジア2次予選#SAMURAIBLUE vsモンゴル🇲🇳📅10/10(木)19:35📍埼玉スタジアム2002🎫当日券はオンライン販売のみ📺テレビ朝日系列/NHK-BS1✅https://t.co/nSjoMTEUZQ#daihyo #新しい景色を2022 pic.twitter.com/SylLW8Vcl7— サッカー日本代表 🇯🇵 (@jfa_samuraiblue) October 10, 2019 Nice to see Junya Ito starts ahead of Doan and Kubo. While Wataru Endo is back to the starting line-up for the first time since he get injured in Asian Cup’s semifinal against Iran.
Oh he's not yet ready to start for Japan. We have better players infront of him. We need him on the bench.