Chapter 76: The New Commander of Japan
New book seeking recommendation votes and member clicks ^_^
As the best domestic coach at present, Xu Genbao naturally wouldn't fail to see that Dongfang team's low-key defensive counterattack is more advantageous in the AFC Champions League. However, he couldn't control his mouth and said "Since we're participating in this competition, we must have the ambition to win the championship." Such bold words made Gao Jun scratch his head. As a traverser, he understood the situation of this year's AFC Champions League very well. Perhaps Dongfang team's aggressive pressing attack could also win most of their opponents, but there is still a superpower in this year's AFC Champions League that is not inferior to Guangzhou Evergrande in the future - Saudi Arabia's Ittihad team!
Fortunately, from the schedule of the AFC Champions League, Eastern will have to wait until September's quarterfinals at the earliest to meet Al Ittihad, which is more than half a year away. Eastern is a team that is still rapidly growing in strength, and even coach Gao Hongbo himself can't predict how strong they'll be after six months, so how can he say for sure that they won't be able to face off against Al Ittihad head-on? In this sense, Xu Genbao's high-profile statements are probably also intended to put pressure on the players and force them to grow faster.
However, Xu's high-profile objective has fostered the players' arrogant mentality. The young players were not as stable as the older ones to begin with. As a result, in the second match of the AFC Champions League group stage, Shanghai East Asia, who was hosting 80,000 fans at the Shanghai Stadium, underestimated their opponents and put too much pressure on them. Additionally, the team's defense line had just been reorganized and hadn't fully formed yet, with many loopholes remaining, especially in the two central defenders' slow turning and chasing speed. Consequently, Thailand's BEC Tero Sasana took advantage of this to launch a quick counterattack, scoring two goals within 30 minutes of play, leaving Shanghai East Asia trailing 0-2...
Fortunately, Gao Jun scored an unexpected equalizer with a header before the end of the first half, which helped his teammates who were in a hurry to regain their calm. In the second half, Dongfang team started with Yu Hai scoring with a header, forcing the Thai team to expand its defense and control Dongfang's side road, thus gaining space for midfield penetration, and the power of combining wings and middle was revealed. In the end, Yu Hai, Ribeiro, and Gao Jun each scored a goal in the second half, helping Dongfang team reverse the score and defeat the Thai team without any danger, but losing another goal in the second half again highlighted that Dongfang's defense line needs to be honed, especially when pressing forward.
Although Ao Lin's performance in the second round of the AFC Champions League group stage was mediocre, and his weakness of being hot-tempered and prone to unnecessary yellow cards was exposed, Ali Han still called him up to the national team and let him start directly because the second opponent in the quarterfinals happened to be Japan. It is clear that Ali Han hopes Ao Lin can repeat his brilliant performance in the first match of the AFC Champions League, as for the coordination problem, anyway, most of the frontcourt players in the national team are from Dongfang now, so the tacit understanding should not be a problem.
Although Zico led Japan to the final of the 2004 Asian Cup, where they lost to China in a penalty shootout, after a 3-1 loss to Bahrain in their quarterfinal match, he was criticized for his tactics and substitutions. His stubbornness also increasingly irritated Japanese fans and media.
After Osim took office, he immediately made a big change to the main lineup of the Japanese national team left by Zico. The returning players were naturally summoned as much as possible, and in other positions, as long as the level gap was not too large, he prioritized selecting players who were neglected during the Zico era...
In the first match of the quarterfinals, two new national players who unexpectedly entered the Japanese national team's main lineup attracted widespread attention from the Japanese media. First, there is Tomoaki Makino, a naturalized player with three-quarters European ancestry, who stands at 185 cm and weighs 82 kg, with excellent jumping ability and physical quality that is rarely seen in previous Japanese national teams. Additionally, Makino's footwork technique is also very delicate, suitable for Japan's traditional delicate playing style. Then there is Genichiro Ichinose, a forward with equally excellent physical quality, who comes from the Chiba City Original team previously coached by Oswaldo de Oliveira, and can be said to be one of Oswaldo's trusted players.
Osim's interpretation is that the Japanese team's midfield organization has become quite strong, but the reason why they can't achieve better results in international competitions is mainly due to the lack of strength in both penalty areas. Taking the biggest problem of the defensive line as an example, even if the midfield is very strong, opponents can directly pass through with long passes and quickly advance, and as long as the forwards are strong enough, they can directly blast Japan's weak defense line. The problem with the forward line is also the same. Although there is a famous saying in football that "whoever controls the midfield controls the game", but ultimately, the outcome of a football match is decided by scoring goals and preventing opponents from scoring. If Japan's problems in both penalty areas cannot be solved, then even if they have a big advantage in midfield, they will often "win the battle but lose the war". As a result, their performance naturally won't improve much.
So how to enhance the strength of both restricted areas? Osim thinks that the technology of Japanese forwards and defenders is actually not bad, at least in Asia it is among the best. The reason for the poor performance is mainly due to the lack of physical fitness. Unlike midfield, where there is more space to play out technical advantages, the fight in the penalty area is a bloody one, without physical fitness you can only be blown up by others. Therefore, Osim wants to introduce these two physically fit players to enhance Japan's national team's hardness in both restricted areas...
Osim indeed saw the problem with Japanese men's football, but his thinking was only half right. Defenders are supposed to prevent opponents from scoring, and physical quality is indispensable, because without physical support, defensive techniques can't withstand powerful forwards; The situation of the forwards is quite different, as Japan's midfield is very strong, almost every game creates enough scoring opportunities, so Japanese forwards don't need to have strong personal attacking ability like other Asian teams, but only need to have excellent opportunity-grabbing ability and convert chances created by midfielders into goals. Therefore, what Japan national team needs most are pure shooters with high shooting success rate and midfielders with strong scoring ability, not the powerful forwards Osim thought...
