These european players are just getting started in this season. Honda for example, didn't played neither of the two Serie A matches Milan has. Don't need to enter in panic mode, not right now at least.
If Japan continues to suck at attacking bunkers, maybe they should consider calling up tall guys like Havenaar or Toyoda. Havenaar has been in good form in the Dutch league.
Australia showed a really weak performance against Iraq. They sucked in the build-ups, looked lethargic and not composed overall. After the first match day, none of the top Asian teams performed well. This round will be extremely difficult for any team to overcome.
Every game involved Saudi Arabia is suspect. They always get extremely favorable calls, mostly penalties during crucial moments of the game. The penalty rewarded by the referee to them in the final minutes of the game is just pure irony. This World Cup qualification will be scandalous! Qatar / UAE / Saudi's will sell their sisters to make the 2018 World Cup. With AFC in the mix, you got the recipe to rigged games.
Seriously, who trust arabs? I don't. Here is a good highlight clip. If that is a penalty we would have like 10 penalties each game.
btw, something interesting is that it wasn't a real 4-2-3-1. When the team was without the ball, they played like this: somewhat between 4-4-2 or "4-2-2-2" lol obviously just a random screen but Kagawa was always much higher.
Yea, that's not my style. You have to be always good enough to win convincingly irrespective of the potential number of bad calls coming your way.
Yeah though it was closer to 4-2-2-1 since Kagawa didn't bother playing once again. Even a Honda on one leg is more important than Kagawa, that's really annoying.
Just look at the UAE structure. it couldn't get any weaker than that. the mistery is, how on earth we managed to got beaten by team like them. Apart from we were screwed by our own stupidity. I just don't see Asia is getting stronger, it is us being stupid or worse.
Can you really say you think there was no contact between Oshima and Al Mabkhout in the incident that led to UAE's pk? From the stands it looked like a foul, and I had a better angle than any TV-camera. Every single replay I have seen also gives me the same conclusion. Oshima touched the UAE's player leg inside the box, and the UAE player went down. He might have gone down easily, but a foul is a foul. I am not sure that there was any contact between Usami and the UAE-defender, and that looked much more like a dive to me.
W杯アジア最終予選【日本代表vsUAE代表】前半22分宇佐美選手がPA内で倒されるがファールなし・・。抗議するハリル監督に主審から注意が。 pic.twitter.com/NqkR8mmvgs— とも号 (@tomopanman5) September 1, 2016
Just to ask, were there any fans booing this or any other call the players or coach protested? At least on TV, I can never hear any jeers from the crowd, and feel they should put some pressure on the ref at least.
Even that is blatant PK at so-called physical league like BPL. UAE PK is more of uber-idiocy that shouldn't happen at international level by our players. Niponbesse is right about UAE-Qatar rivalry though, in fact Saudi-UAE-Bahrain against Qatar. But, playing against desert with desert refereeing always put us at the handicapped position as far as i remember.
Yeh that's a PK any day of the week. And if the ref even somehow thought it was a dive by Usami, there should've been a yellow card.
From that angle you can see that is is contact, but a PK? I'm not so sure. The UAE defender are standing firm on the ground, Usami lures the ball past him, but we can't expect the UAE defender to not take that duel. He is physically much stronger ( it looks like Usami is running into a rock) and at the end of the duel he does push him which is obvious, but Usami falls down very easily AND theatrically, and should still atleast partly be considered a dive / simulation.
Oshima's leg was also much stronger than the UAE player who fell down theatrically, thus this was a dive.
Really hope that Ueda, Iwanami and Nakatani have the potential to be as good as them. The JNT really need to sort out their defence by 2018 World Cup, if not i doubt they would make it out of the group stages.