10/16 Japan vs Jamaica

Starting lineup

FW
Alex Takahara
MF
Nakamura Ono Inamoto Nakata
DF
Hattori Miyamoto Matsuda Narahashi
GK
Sogahata

 

Wow, the "golden midfield."

Obviously Zico isn't messing around. He wants to win and is bringing out the big guns now.

 

Ive posted my review of the NT lineup at the Rising Sun News.
Basically, this lineup shows that Zico is going to build his team one step at a time. He obviously has not made any clear decisions on personnel yet, so instead, he selected a lot of veteran players with a clearly established playing style, to provide a "blueprint" of what he wants his teams to do in the future.

It goes without saying that geezers like Akita, Nakayama, and even Narahashi or Tanaka, will not be around in 2006. They are only in the team because they are good "icons" of what kind of player Zico wants for his team.

I think Zico could have done a much better job of personnel selection, but I think his roster makes a lot of sense if you look at it in terms of his probable objective: to give everyone in Japan a blueprint, or an instruction manual. "The ABCs of Playing for Zico Japan".

All of the players he named are very experienced, and they know each other extremely well (almost all of them are from either Jubilo or Antlers). Therefore they can demonstrate a very smooth and coordinated model of what Zico wants his team to do. Probably they will not play "brilliantly", since some of the best players available were left off the team. But what they will do is build a strong foundation for the team, which can be built up later by adding more effective (not top mention younger) players.

 

nakayama, nanami, narahashi, nakata, and akita... cool. too bad kawaguchi isn't there.

 

I agree. I see some veterans can stay at the same physical condition by 2006, and we may(must!) see better players taking their spots from the younger generation. Yet, I'm not so confident that Zico would stick with the 4-men line defense. We may be back to 3-men line defense.

Anyway, Yamada is a verstaile sideback, balanced in offense and defense. He's strong in contact, has speed and can score from the mid range.(he lacks a bit of accuracy in cross-balls though)

Tanaka and Miyamoto...They could be dropped eventually. I see no need to add/replace MFs. We may need one or two players who have speed or dribbling skills to beat defenders though, like Motoyama, Ishikawa, Matsui, Okubo, T.Tanaka, etc. And we can't leave Ichihara's Abe as a competitor to Inamoto and Fukunishi.

And our FWs...I see no reason why Suzuki and Yanagisawa have been selected because they altogether have scored less than 10 goals this season. Zico should start looking for other FWs like Kurobe and some younger ones like Maeda and U-19's Abe who are more technical and appear to have better skills to net the balls.

Among other players missing from the list, I wanted to see Kakegawa, Fujita, Tsuchiya, Araiba and Ichikawa.

Well, what wee need is a balnace and quality, competitive players. Let's see how both veterans and youngsters develop over the next 3 years.

 

no toda?

YES!

 

Re: Starting lineup

I see Yanagisawa starting as the set-up forward, instead of Alex.

I'm disappointed Araiba didn't make the squad but I guess Matsu's explanation makes sense, that younger players will be worked in gradually.

Hard to argue with the midfield though.

 

Re: Starting lineup

my pick
FW
Alex Nakayama
MF
Ono Fukunishi Nanami Nakata
DF
K Nakata Akita Matsuda Narahashi
GK
Narazaki

 

what do you think about Naoki Sakai?

I think he should be on the national team.

He should play as a shadow striker/attacking midfielder, and he should be allowed to make forward runs. I think he would be great.

I think the JFA is making a huge mistake in not selecting Sakai. He is a pretty young guy (25 I think) and he could be very valuable to a Japanese team that lacks a killer punch up front.

 

sakai
http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/jleague/consadole/sakai.html

geez i typed "naoki sakai" at yahoo and the matsu's site came on the 2nd.

 

My picks--4-1-2-2-1(This is unlikely though)

------FW------
--MF-----MF--
-MF-------MF-
------MF------
DF-DF---DF-DF
------GK------

FW(1):
Takahara(Nakayama, Suzuki,Yanagisawa)

MF(2):
Alex(H.Nakata, Ogasawara)
Nakamura(H.Nakata, Ogasawara, Yanagisawa)

MF(2):
Ono(Nanami)
H.Nakata(Fukunishi, Ogasawara)

MF(1):
Inamoto(Hattori, Miyamoto)

DF(4)
Hattori(K.Nakata)
Akita(Tanaka, Miyamoto)
Matsuda
Yamada(Narahashi)

GK(1):
Sogahata(Narazaki)

 

Zico already announced his starting lineup.
I think this is a refreshing change from Troussier, who tried to keep everyone in suspense all the time. But it is a lot more effective on a player's psychology to let them know where they stand, instead of keeping them guessing.

Anyway, this is the starting lineup that Zico named:

. . . . . Takahara . . . Suzuki
Nakata H. . . . . . . . . . . . . Nakamura
. . . . . . . . Ono . . Inamoto
Hattori . . . . . Akita . . . . . Narahashi
. . . . . . . . . . Matsuda
. . . . . . . . . .Narazaki

 

Only second???
Ill have to write a nasty letter to Yahoo!

Sakai will never play for the national team. I dont think he is a particularly good player to begin with, but considering his situation now, he doesnt have a chance. Zico is saying that he will not name any J2 players to the national team, and Consadole are certain to be demoted next year. Playing for a team like Consadole, Sakai will never make the national team (even at Reysol, I never thought he was national team material)

 

search result
http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=naoki+sakai&hc=0&hs=0&ac=

 

Does this mean Ono will be playing defensive mid? I like Ono better as an attacking midfielder, but with Nakamura and Nakata in the same midfield, Ono is the choice to drop back.

 

I think the initial set up will be that Inamoto and Ono will be dropped back in the midfield, but Zico mentions that they want to have a fluid midfield meaning that all 4 balance each other. If Inamoto goes up, someone drops back in his place and vice versa. While this idea sounds awesome, its gonna require a tremendous amount of understanding of each other. Nakata, Inamoto, Nakamura, and Ono are first class midfielders and I have no doubt about that, but we have to remember that these players have not played on the same pitch together at the same time.(I don't think that it has ever happened)

I still think this is all about offense, while we will have a four back set up, I think the middle can be very open. While Inamoto is good at picking off a play, I think there is a need for an enforcer that just goes for the ball and player. None of our midfielder has that but makes up with a great knowledge of the game to probably be able to press effectively. Matsuda and Akita are forced to do that and it could leave some trouble in the back.

I think the inclusion of Narahashi and Akita shows that we still lack young players to fill that role. I am no way saying they are not good enough, they have the experience that this team needs. While Zico may have picked players that he knows and comfortable with, it is clear that these players may not be around for 2006 and we need to develop them.

 

Zorro is out due to a knee injury. he'll be out for a month. not good news for gamba. miyamoto has been criticized by anti-zorros for team's 3 straight loss against kobe, urawa, and iwata and also making too many mistakes. omura substituted for zorro. zico should've picked one from kiba or yamaguchi or tsuzuki or yoshiwara whoever from gamba.

 

I just read on the Metros forum that Jamaica just called up two Metros to be in this match.

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=18709

Andy Williams is an amazing player in the midfield, and Ziadie is... well, He's Mark Chung's Cousin. I would like to know how they do in this match if anyone can catch it on TV.

 

does anyone have their complete squad? do they still have any of burton, whitmore, lawrence, and simpson?

 

I just heard jamaica brought 15 players out of 22 from oversea league and 7 of them played france '98 and 4 started against japan.

 

meantime as omura joined the team we have 9 from france '98 (2 did not play at all) and 6 started against jamaica.

let us make a time trip now

 

Jamaica squad -- Aaron Lawrence, Donovan Ricketts, Ian Goodison, Marco McDonald, Claude Davis, Omar Daley, Fabian Taylor, Irvino English, Robert Scarlett, Jermaine Johnson, Kevin Lisbie, Ricardo Fuller, Barrington Hayles, Paul Hall, Micah Hyde, Andrew Williams, Craig Ziadie, Linval Dixon and Keith Kelly.

Lowe (Rushden), Burton (Derby), Gardner (Bolton), and Lawrence (Bradford City) are injuried. Whitmoor decided not participate.

 

Charleston Battery and Minnesota Thunder are in the A-League, a division below the MLS.

But since there's no promotion/relegation in USA, A-League is more like JFA than J2 in terms of quality.

Jamaica has really gone down (or just not improved at all) since 1998.