Brazil is definitely our nightmare. Never been that weak vs Italia, Belgium, Netherlands, Uruguay, Mexico, France, Argentina that we played last years.
Considering that apart from Kawashima and Okazaki, the other 9 starters were a collection of inexperienced players that barely have 20 caps in between them. And considering we were playing without a proper DM, and considering Brazil played with their full strength team, the result was almost inevitable. I'll comment later tonight when I finished watching the replay.
Is playing amc as wing a trend now or Sth. First was kagawa, then mata, then ozil and now honda. Just curious.
Kobayashi is really good, Aguirre can try him in friendlies to see if he can have a spot in the JNT as a regular.
China still won't make it to the final round of World Cup qualifiers. And neither will we if we play with this team! Its hard to judge since Brazil always crushes us, but it looked like we had a u17 squad out there. Even Fatbinho was running circles around us, and with a decent pitch Neymar would probably have about 6 goals and 2 assists.
I wouldn't count out China this time around. More than half of their national team plays for Guangzhou evergrande. That team is pretty good to what it is. I assume China will at least make it to the final round of 2018 World Cup qualifying. The final round would be two group of six teams instead of the previous five.
Well Guangzhou are good, but take away their foreign players and they aren't really better than top clubs from the other countries. Then compare them to all star teams from the other countries, and then throw in Europe-based players, etc. But if they did increase the teams, then you are right they have a good chance.
This team will obviously never play in a qualifier but you can't see new players if you never try them. They lost by one more goal than the usual, it's not that bad.
Aguirre is a genius! His idea of fielding an almost inexperienced team against Brazil is the best way to test newcomers and fringe players, as it will uncover their weaknesses in order to improve them. I just finished watching the game an hour ago and as expected the CM was our weak link, and most of the goals conceded came from a bad play there. The trio of Shibasaki, Morioka and Taguchi has only 5 caps in between them, with Taguchi only played in the last few minutes against Jamaica in his only cap, so starting them against a world class midfield that consists of Oscar, Willian and Luis Gustavo and with an attacking force like Neymar was a sign of things to come. Morioka had the worst performance of the trio, as he only made one interception in the whole first half before being subbed out, while as I said before Shibasaki is weak physically to hold his own against top class opposition and it was apparent today, as he lost many balls too easily under pressure. While the surprise of the match was Taguchi, who has a good match, and might be a good addition to the team in the CM position. Junya Tanaka had a bad match, he, Morioka and Gotuko Sakai were the worst players today. While Shiotani and Morishige had a good and solid game as CBs, but they seemed to be run out of gas by the 70th minute mark. Ota had a good game too, while our attack was ineffective because most of the build ups were interrupted by bad passing caused by lack of understanding between our players, as most of them are playing for the first time together. What I'm puzzled at is that our player never tried to tackle Brazil's players and try to play it as clean as possible, while a simple 2 fouls would make us avoid the third and fourth goals at least. Anyway it was a good match, and I think Aguirre is building his team in the right way. Good luck Japan.
We won by an owngoal vs Jamaica, it seems normal to lose 4-0 (like the last time) vs Brazil far from Japan too. Let's Aguirre experiment, better now then never/in a real match.
Well, we have lost 3 or 4 0 every time, so might as well do it while trying new players. Shibasaki had some horrible giveaways under no pressure. Cost 1 goal and should've cost another if Neymar didn't show off and go near post. Hopefully they will learn something from this. For most of them, they have to go abroad.