Ito is good but he needs to improve his end product. Endo is the heart of this team, a player that really makes the difference.
lol, not Osako And Shibasaki is indeed Segunda material at best. Surely shouldn't be found in NT roster anywhere soon...
Well, that's his forte. In fact, you just mentioned all of his strong points in one sentence. And he's better than Osako, which means he's a little bit above 'atrocious' at the NT level. You probably won't see him in NT in the near future unless he'll be scoring like 20+ goals in Belgium. At least I hope he won't be in the NT after all because it tells a story of hopeless Japanese strikers and he fits a part in this play. Okazaki and Muto (for a while) are the only exeptions in Japanese strikers lack of scoring prowess at higher levels.
Come on after watching osako at the world cup, i cant understand how you can say he is bad. He was immense for japan. His hold up is class, very clever. Suzuki plays with energy, but doesnt have any quality.
WC was more than 2 years ago, and now Osako is simply atrocious. Not that he was world-beater in 2018...
Maybe a workrate kind of CM ala Yamaguchi/Oshima, i don't think he is creative enough to be a creative CM that can produce passes that split pass defence, etc. imo.
1-0. Cote d'Ivoire had only one shot on goal. With the emergence of Tomiyasu and Endo, Japan's defense is rock solid now.
Osako is having a difficult run at Werder, and Kohfeldt (a big fan/defender of him) even said that he won’t really play CF this season. With Okazaki hurt I don’t think there were better options for these friendlies - Yuma isn’t doing great, Musashi is showing decent flashes at Beerschot, and obviously the domestic-based players were unavailable. Not that the latter makes much of a difference - the only Japanese forwards who even register on the J1 scoring charts are Kobayashi and Furuhashi.
Maybe the likes of Taisei Miyashiro/Kyosuke Tagawa/Taichi Hara, etc who are pure CFs can be tried as well. Those seems to be at least ok in the physical aspect. Agree that Furuhashi, etc. spend more time on the wings more.
I think Musashi Suzuki was ok yesterday. His movements caused several tactical problems for his opponents.
They are having decent minutes at their respective clubs imo. The main reason I suggest them is that they are the typical CFs which play centrally mostly, even though sometimes they drift onto the wings, especially Miyashiro imo. These players are the ones I felt has the ability to hold the ball up and get their teammates into play ala Osako, etc. and possess aerial threat. Of course, ability wise, they still need to improve on be on Osako's level.
Furuhashi and others who are in good form like Mitoma, etc. are mainly wingers. JNT don't really lack options for those positions. Curious, what are your suggestions for the CF position in the JNT?
There's a distinction between wingers (Ito, Mitoma) and forwards who play in wide areas (e.g. Furuhashi, Villa, Werner...). It's not the end of the world if you don't have a terrific center forward who bangs in goals, most national teams are faced with the same problem. We don't know who they could realistically bring in next time, but Okazaki and maybe Asano (if travel restrictions allow) are worth a look. Yuma needs to find his form and there are rumblings that he lashed out at Moriyasu on Twitter... Domestically it's pretty slim pickings. If you had a tournament or WC qualifier coming up, you might call up Kobayashi who is averaging a goal every 86 minutes. I would still say Furuhashi "counts" as a striker in this context, but you could even take a look at one of the guys lighting it up in J2, like Disaro. Otherwise...you could bring in Daizen, Nagai, Usami, et al. for something different, but I doubt you'd learn anything new about them.
2 consecutive clean sheets against African powerhouses are impressive. Japan's defense easily coped with the physicality of African play. I wish Tomiyasu had been born 2 years earlier, so that he could have played in the Belgium game!
Iirc, he liked a tweet stating that Kawasaki Frontale plays better than the JNT if i am not wrong. A lot of young potential CBs coming up e.g Kodai Nagata, Teppei Oka, Seiji Kimura, Ryuya Nishio Hayate Toma, Rio Omori, Shingo Morita, Seiya Baba and Haruya Fujii, etc. The likes of Ayumu Seko and Ikumi Sekigawa, etc. are already semi-starters I feel that those above have some potential imo. Some of them plays as full-back and DMs as well but those players suit CB too. Will be interesting to see if their predominant role will eventually be at CB or move to other positions e.g Full-backs and DMs.
Roughly: “(You) don’t like that I act annoyed (on the pitch)? Who the F do you think you are? Fine, then just don’t call me (to the team).” Supposedly Yuma then liked a reply asking whether he was referring to Moriyasu.
Shoji was the best defender in that WC better than Yoshida and he was even a few inches to stop Chadli's shot in the tragicomic epilogue. Anyway Tomiyasu is the best thing about Japanese players in Europe the last season and I hope even in this.
Yoshida is a bit inconsistent imo. It may be a doubt if he is in form in the WC 2 years later. There should be more options tried in his position. Maybe Moriyasu can try playing Itakura more in the CB position and maybe try 1 or 2 more options. Nakayama suits DM much more imo.