They failed to qualify against Maccabi Haifa in the Conference League playoffs. Watanabe on the field, Schmidt on the bench.
They rotate in goal : Roef for Europe, Schmidt in the league. As for bad form : Still 2 important players (incl captain & crucial MF metronome) injured and they won't be back soon. Yesterday to make matters worse, the backup captain and metronome was suspended. A promising player they bought for 7M Eur to replace the 3 attacking players transferred during the winter break is a 19yo kid from Sweden who still has to adjust and grow. Daisuke Yokota, the other bit more mature new transfer who was good in his first games, suffered a knee injury a few weeks ago and is also out for a long time too. They also had to miss 4 players because of Asian and Africa Cup in January. They basically had to rebuild their entire team during the winter break with barely new players available. Hence the 6L 1W 2D in 2024.
Great news ! I'd love to see how many japanese captains we've had in Europe. From what I recall I saw Endo, Hasebe, Kawashima, Gotoku Sakai, Nagatomo (by default). Who else? Someone remembers?
Watanabe scored against Chelsea in a 2-4 loss. Atsuki also played 90th minutes and for some phases of the game, Gent was very good into the game. Watanabe should be a safe Member of the JNT, so much quality but its almost the same, like Furuhashi.
Glad he scored. Difficult game for them. Yeah I agree, I said it a long time. But as with Furuhashi Moriyasu dont rate him.