Excellent match . . . for both teams. The momentum really swung from one side to the other. There were long stretches where Japan seemed to be in control, and other long stretches where Korea seemed to be stronger. I dont think either team would feel ashamed to lose a match that was so close in terms of both performance and team strategy. Japan's midfield was superior to Korea, maybe by 6:4 or even 7:3, but the forwards were exactly the opposite (Nakayama and Yamashita sucked, whereas all of the Korean forwards had good moments, particularly Lee CY (?) on the right flank) The two defences were about even, though in Japan's case the central defence was excellent (Akita and Morioka) but the wings, expecially Hattori was completely out of his depth. Almost all of the best Korean attacks came from pressure down the right flank, where Hattori conceded easy crosses time and again. Korea's defence was equal with Japan on the whole, but weaker in the central defence, which is what cost them the match in the final minute. In addition to Nagai's goal, they gave Nakayama two perfect opportunities to score which he completely wasted (any one of the Korean forwards would have scored easily if they had such an easy shot). I think that Japan and Korea should merge, and use Japanese midfielders and central defenders, plus Korean forwards and wings. If we did that, We could win the World Cup in 2006 (oh well, Im just dreaming. . . . . ) On a more serious note, the player of the match was definitely Ogasawara, who seemed to be in total control every time he touched the ball. For Korea, Yoo SC and Ahn JH were both good at moving the ball forward but didnt do such a good job of feeding their forwards. If they had done a better job of sending the ball to a cutting forward, Korea could have won the match. On the other side, Zico needs to get serious about finding some decent players up front. Of course it was not his fault that Yanagisawa, Kurobe and Kubo were all injured, but even so, there HAS to be someone better than Nakayama or Yamashita. It is really annoying to watch players like Ogasawara, Nakata, Alex and Fukunishi work so hard to create chances, and then see the forwards waste their opportunities so badly! Hey, I have an idea: Do you think that Lee CY would be interested in getting Japanese citizenship?? (^c,~)
Korea lost? I missed the game.. but too bad... err I hate injury time goals! (happened against France and Brazil too... happened to Japan in Doha, etc) I hope Coelho doesn't get too much heat for this, but I know he will, considering it was Korea vs Japan match and losing this will automatically make you a national villan in Korea In my opinion, both sides didn't have the full squad and and it was just a friendly anyway, so no one should fuss too much over this result... I hope so, anyway. Good testing ground for both teams, that's how I see it. Matsu, the forward you are referring to is Lee Chun-Soo I think. From the match reports I read, he nicked the post sometime in the first half, and generally played well overall... as for the citizenship thing, he has his critics in Korea for his attitude problems and is not particularly well liked (especially in this board), so maybe Japan can recruit him, but you'll have to give us Nakata or Ono in return... lol. It's good to hear that he played well because I'm one of his supporters and hopefully, he will continue to improve. Youichi Nagai scored... This is the same forward who partnered up with Takahara during the World Youth championship in 1999 I'm assuming? He played quite well in that tournament and I was wondering where he was now because I never heard about him again after that tournament... he seems to be a backup forward at senior level now, but good to see that he scored (although I heard it was sort of a fluky type of goal off a deflection... which defender choked here?) and maybe this goal will give him some more fame and more opportunities to play for the Japanese NT. I can't wait for the rematch for these two teams, with both sides FULL STRENGTH. Hopefully we'll see this in the Asian Cup 2004
duh, I lived in Fukuoka and watched like 30 avispa games when I was there and saw him score about 1 or 2 goals in all that time. I think his best game ever was in Olympic qualifying where he scored 2 goals in one of those games where Japan was beat Nepal or someone by scores of 11-0.............
boo. boo to japan..and their supporters. they sang the same song for 10 minutes straight. GOod. On a serious note, I congratulate Japan .Good shieat. we'll get u next time tho. peace.
I heard shots on goal was 14-5 for Korea? Oh man, that's some serious lack of finishing there... I wonder how long Coelho will experiment with one top... On a side note, why can't we ever win in Seoul? First Germany, then Brazil, and now Japan... Seoul and Daegu must really have bad karma... let's just play in Busan all the time or something.
Yeah... just the pain of getting burned by injury time goals... I hate it! Congrats to Japan though, I failed to mention that in my last post. Who's up next for both teams?
Finally, a win for Zico. A close game as I expected. Next up is East Asian Championships in late May. The next Korea vs Japan is on 6/3.
Korea VS Japan Very entertaining match and had fun watching it. Congrats to Japan, too. Again, Korea proved himself again to be the worst finisher than anybody else!! Plenty of chances, but players just didn't have the composure to put a right touch to the ball. Nonetheless, I thought LEE DONG GUK was doing decent out there. I didn't expect too much from it and i didn't, but he was all right. Seem to have hard time catching up the fast flow of the game from time to time, but it's good to see him getting back on his feet since...dunno, but it's been awhile. Japan had a strong midfieldl lineup and was superior than Korea's although they are missing Nakata, Nakamura, Ono..etc.I wasn't thrilled about our midfielders though. Well, we need Seol, Kim NI back, too. Too many passes not getting through.. lack precision. We need to get better passing player out there.. Both defenses...were o.k for being in the transitional position from 3 to 4 back... Overall, I loved the game, but just don't like the result..lol Oh well. It will be really interesting to see how both team would do with all the european based players though. Should be fun to watch.
An entertaining game with plenty of attacking play from both sides. It was a real let down for me whe the ball looped into the net, and just a few seconds before I was thinking, 'Great, another 0-0 draw. It can't get any worse than this'! Ahn Jung Hwan played much better than in the Columbia match in my opinion. Lee Dong Guk looked sharp at times and I thought he shouldn't have been substituted as we badly missed an out and out striker towards the end of the game when out players had the possession couldn't find anyone lurking in the box to pass to. Lee Chun Soo played quite well, and looked likely to score as he flicked the ball over the Japanese defenders... but he hit the post! The match was full of bad misses from both sides. I was very impressed with how organised the Japense NT was. Compared to them our squad looked a little messy and wasted time dragging the ball when passing would have done the job so much quicker. The Japanese players looked threatening on the counter and moved into dangerous positions through some neat passing. We created good chances as well, but I was dissapointed at the lack of a proper build up play. This resulted in our play being rather predictable and easy to defend against, as well as tiring the players. Use width, but don't use it the same way ALL the time for goodness sakes (E.g. Pass to left winger. Too many defenders? Pass the ball back. Give the ball to left winger again, and hope that he dribbles past the defenders)! After the highs of the World Cup, I must admit it's really frustrating seeing the results of our NT not being upto scratch. I feel a little sorry for Coelho because he'll be under serious pressure to deliver from now on, but not too much, Zico prepared his side much better in my opinion.
[American soccer fan mode]Duhhhhh, Japan only won because they brought their B team. Korea brought their C+ team and that's why Korea lost. Just you wait til we get our European regulars back. Japan had their B team available and that's the only reason why they won. Korea's C+ team did OK in my opinion but seeing as how C+ is worse than B, Korea will have won if we both brought the A team.[/American soccer fan mode] Anyhow, Japan coming into Seoul and beating Korea is a pretty big accomplishment no matter what the circumstances. Korea needs to find some answer to its finishing problems. It's almost ridiculous. I wasn't able to watch the entire match, but it seemed like both teams struggled with their lack of organization, which is quite understandable because neither team got adequate practice time - what was it, 2 days? I wouldn't worry too much about this match (other than the fact that we LOST TO JAPAN), because I don't think either team played to their full potential or even could have given the fact that they were missing so many players.
i thought we had more shots than 5. the ratio was more like 2:1 for korea. korea was attacking hard esp the later first half but they seemed to be rushing too much for finishing or made it kinda simple. the only penetration that looked extremely dangerous was the one from lee chon soo
[American soccer fan mode]Duhhhhh, Japan only won because they brought their B team. Korea brought their C+ team and that's why Korea lost. Just you wait til we get our European regulars back. Japan had their B team available and that's the only reason why they won. Korea's C+ team did OK in my opinion but seeing as how C+ is worse than B, Korea will have won if we both brought the A team.[/American soccer fan mode] - haha, this does sound like American soccer fans(personally i hate this term "soccer"- the term soccer should be used for football de americano, instead of true football!!)
i wonder if nakayama and yamashita will be ever called up again. alex would just be sitting on bench with that performance. not too bad in defense but weak on offense. ogasawara was great in controlling the midfield, if he scored that loop shot, the game would've been much different. i'll give mvp to nagai for the goal and ogasawara for overall performance. narazaki was solid through out the game leaving kawaguchi no chance of taking his position again. the rest of them are sometimes good sometimes shaky.
man sbs sucks, i got like a 32-109kb/s crappy audio/video with buffering every 0-2 minutes. hehe, anyways, overall i think that korea did pretty good. our young forwards/mfs need work, we couldnt finish although we had plenty of chances. maybe next time. oh yea, when yoo sangchul got ass-raped by the japanese player , was korea supposed to get a penalty? (i could only hear the commentators as they mentioned something about it)
Boring game. The result could've gone both ways. The Korean defender tried to clear the ball, it got deflected off Nagai, and looped into the goal. Our midfield was non-existent just like pre-WC era. Korean midfield was playing like one-cell amoeba, while Japanese midfield was very creative finding spaces and giving excellent opportunities to the forwards. Things got little better when Kim Doo-hyun came in. And I think we're not gonna see any more of Kim Do-Geun and Choi Sung-yong. Both teams exposed the weaknesses of the other, so I guess it was a good game. On a side note, what the hell was Noh Moohyun doing in a soccer match??? If he came to see the game, just stfu and watch the game, there was no need to make boring speech.