And they are flooding out of the stadium now, too. I guess they are not interested in seeing what Kubo can do.
Ogawa gets his goal. It's now 5-0. This whole international break is a strong statement of intent before the one in October.
Anyone who still believes that Asano is more useful to a 23-man squad than Kyogo needs to have his/her head checked.
Typical unsportsmanship from the middle eastern fans. Bail out once they know they’re losing. How they are considered passionate football fans is beyond me.
Kubo, Nakamura and Ogawa are fringe players ^^ hahah. And yeah incredible miss by Asano again ^^. Maeda can all do what Asano can do only way better. Furuhashi could offer sooo much more to JNT.
First half was not very convincing. Second half... only Japan playing. This could have been 10-0. Should have been at least another 7-0. Some embarrassing misses towards the end. Interesting that this time Moriyasu basically sent the same team out twice in a row. Didn't see China, but seems only Kamada in for Kubo. Prefer this to his former idea to change the whole team basically, starters in one, subs the next, but a bit more changes would have been ok. 3 back seems fix for the moment? Works perfectly fine vs opponents like this. Stronger teams like in October, doubtful how sensible it is to have Mitoma with that many defensive duties. Play him in Minamino's spot, but then who to play on the left? Nakamura, but same problem why waste an offensive talent with defensive duties? Not fully convinced by Machida btw. Ueda good second goal, good work for Morita's first, but in the first half they didn't manage to give him any decent balls again. Not his fault necessarily... Doan, Ito... Doan is Doan, apart from scoring in the World Cup, he has never shown anything in the NT. Shouldn't even be considered for a starting position, super-sub as in the WC max, but just find somebody better is easier. Can't be that hard. Ito, some good scenes, but he had an obscene amount of free space on the right side, got the ball time and time again and still managed to completely waste half of the chances he got. Can't we just put Nakamura on the right?
Good game again. The pressure was to much for Bahrain after the 2-0 it was over. Nothing to complain. Japan should have scored another 2-4 goals but you could clearly see the pressure was lost after the 5-0 and the japanese players take it to easy and their conentration was down like you could see in form of Asano or the other big chance of Ogawa. But apart from that all was fine.
This is a bit sad. I mean: with these type of opponents JNT will arrive always out of mental form against real opponents. And I'm talking about the likes of Iran, SK etc. Not even taking in account powerhouse NTs.
Indeed... Japan was strong, but I had the impression Bahrain were also terrible. Pretty worrying knowing that this is a team that beat Australia. I mean what on earth was the 3-0... For a moment I thought I was watching a charity match with retired players, the way that DMF picks up Morita was simply embarrassing.
The first real test would be against KSA next month. AFAIK, JNT hasn't won against them on their turf yet, and they seem to be back on track after the initial stumble against Indonesia.
Japan is now ranked 16th in the world, ahead of Mexico and the USA. Out of curiosity, I was wondering if Japan had won the Asian Cup by winning all the matches as well as all the qualifying matches for the World Cup, would they be in pot 1? Knowing that to be in pot 1 this year, you have to be ranked at least 9th, as Canada, the USA and Mexico are organising the World Cup. FIFA world rankings - LIVE - Daily updating - 19 September 2024 (football-ranking.com)
Very sure Japan would be in the top 10 if they won the Asia Cup. Very interesting thought. Pot 1 would be awesome for them. That should be a long term goal for the JNT.
At the 2030 World Cup, all you'd need to do to be ranked in Pot 1 would be to be in the top 11. This is an achievable goal from the World Cup in Saudi Arabia, if we have a very good World Cup in 2026 and maintain our good form until then.