You give far too much credit to our defense and far too little to the attack, the only hopes IMO for Japan to advance from the group stage phase is to outscore their opponents (and yes, this is perfectly within their abilities). Japan will concede goals, no less than 4 I think, which would be a slight improvement from the current tendency of conceding an average of 2 goals per game.
6 pts. don't guarantee passing to the next phase, as 3 teams can end with 6 pts. in a group and GD, would decide whom passes as first and whom passes as second, while a 3rd team would be left behind.
After seeing toure's goal today against villa am seriously beginning to worry about japans chances of beating ivory coast
did you see toure's goal against villa on 07/05/2014? 4 men couldnt stop him. scored after running from his own penalty area with the ball
i think he has a high chance of scoring or setting up a goal. also am worried by japans ability to score penalties. kagawa is not so good @ 54?
Clad, can you please stop taking things that have happened once and use them as evidence of something that always happens? No, there is no reason to think Tourè will beat 4 men and score a Maradona-like goal against Japan. Maybe it will happen, but I don't see him scoring every match not even in the african qualifiers. Messi didn't score when Argentina played Japan. France nor Ribery didn't even score in France. Same for penalties. I've seen Endo score a penalty against Manchester United, and missing one against Jordan for example. What's your point?
He is right. Stats count. Than Toure will score... And Japan will win cuz Japan won a lot of times against african teams in the past. That's all.
the number of times england would have reached semi finals of finals had it not been for poor penalties. am worried japan will suffer englands same fate like they did against paraguay in last world cup. you think japan is good at penalties now? are they better at penalties than: uruguay, italy or england?
I have no idea. Eiji saved tons of penalties in JLeague and Belgian league, 2 penalties in the asian cup, 0 in the world cup. What does that mean? answer: nothing. Penalties are often about the feel of the moment. Japan wasn't bad against paraguay. Just a single crossbar, not even a save. I'm not sure how it's different. He may score, or he may not. It depends how the coach uses him, where, how he feels with his team mates, what happens on the pitch, etc. It could happen, or it could not. Maybe a defender will score on a corner kick? Remind me, how many goals did Messi score in 2010 World Cup?
actually eiji saved 1 against denmark but most important question is: is japan better than italy, uruguay or england at penalties. what do you think? i think not
Hey, why are we talking about penalties against England/Italy/Uruguay now? However italians think they are unlucky at the penalties cuz of some important defeats in the past (before winning the WC in the same way ) and England are really really bad at it ("England in Ashes" titled some newspaper after Euro 2012 when Cole and Young -lol Moyes- missed the penalty against the same Italy) than I'm pretty confident penalties are not Japan Achilles heel. In anycase Shinji will not shoot a penalty at all (I hope ).