Japan Plays Iceland

Apparently Japan has a friendly with Iceland this Friday. Since it’s not a FIFA international day, the team will be comprised entirely of domestic players who won’t miss any club matches or have to travel halfway across the world both ways. The Iceland team will also be made up of players from their domestic league (except for a couple in Norway and one in Greece). Unsurprisingly, the Icelandic league plays during the summer because of frigid arctic winters.

The Japan team…

Goalkeepers (rookies in bold): Takuto Hayashi, Kaito Yamamato, and Shusaku Nishikawa.

Defenders: Yuichi Komano, Daiki Iwamasa, Yasuyuki Konno, Yuzo Kurihara, Naoya Kondo, Masahiko Inoha, Ryota Moriwaki, and Tomoaki Makino.

Midfielders: Yasuhito Endo, Kengo Nakamura, Yuki Abe, Chikashi Masuda, Yosuke Kashiwagi, Ryota Isomura, and Gaku Shibasaki.

Forwards: Naohiro Ishikawa, Ryoichi Maeda, Yoshito Okubo, Jungo Fujimoto, Junya Tanaka, Hidetaka Kanazono(injured), and Yuya Kubo.

In all, nine debutants, including three who are 20 or younger. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing Junya Tanaka (the Japan Footblog J. League Player of the Year!). He had a great Club World Cup, and hopefully he can play well and solidify his place in the national team. After leading Kashiwa to promotion and then the championship, Tanaka finally gets his chance with the national team. There is no place for Marcus Tulio Tanaka, who can’t seem to get a game under Zaccheroni.

Zaccheroni will probably be experimental in this game, so it’s difficult to predict who will be in the starting xi. I would say Tanaka, Fujimoto, Maeda, Nakamura, and Endo are all pretty certain starters among the front six. In back, Komano and Konno are locks. I don’t have a clue who will start in goal.

The experts (message boards) seem to think that youngsters like Shibasaki and Kubo are being brought along just to experience the senior team and are unlikely to play. That’s kind of disappointing, but I’m sure they’ll get their chance in the future.

Overall, experimental or not, I don’t think Japan will have too much trouble in this friendly. After this, World Cup qualifiers start up again.

Other news: Keisuke Honda played for CSKA in the Champions League against Real Madrid. Honda came on as a sub in the 68th minute and played well. The match ended 1-1, a good result for a team in the middle of its winter break, against an opponent that has been redefining ‘steamrolling’ in its domestic league.