Almost all J3 clubs and many J2 clubs as well manage to make ends meet with crowds of 3-4000. How is it possible that teams in Japan (whose financial and grassroots support hurdles are FAR higher) can survive with modest attendances, but ALeague teams cant?

My guess is that its about attitudes, rather than administrators. Make all clubs fully independent, and fully responsible for their own finances. Then let them compete to see who makes it into the top flight and who doesnt. If no club from Sydney makes it into the A1, so be it. (FWIW Japan went 7 years without a J1 team in Tokyo). Until you cut the strings between corporate control and football management, you wont have good football management.

1998 World Cup

Thanks to Mitch Duke, for once again demonstrating the world-class competitive quality of the J.League Division 2!

While Moriyasu probably deserves credit for a good plan, it wasnt as if they drew up the formation change in the locker room at half time. Moriyasu has been carefully plotting a 16-man strategy for every single contest (which makes sense given how deep the Japan NT is these days). His plans entail the use of all five subs, and he has sketched out the scenarios. While coaches in Europe have certainly adjusted to the fact that they have more substitution options, I dont know how many have actually sat down and considered the flexibility that five subs allows, and designed a strategy around it

Japan’s approach to the entire World Cup was based on getting a draw here (ie against Germany), then beating Costa Rica, and hoping that Spain would either be already qualified or also with a win and a draw meaning that they would be happy to rest players and settle for a scoreless draw. If Japan had been still 0-0 at half time, you would have seen Kubo and Maeda off for Minamino and Shibasaki/Morita. Japan would have gone to a three-DMF 4-5-1 and focused on long balls to Ito or Asano.

Ideally, the plan was to make it to half time either 0-0 or 1-1 (assuming maybe Maeda or Ito gets a breakaway), then change to a 4-5-1, or a 5-4-1 in the second half, but with a really high press and looking to counterattack. As it was, Japan had to make a more attacking change earlier than they expected [and I have no doubt that Moriyasu already had a scenario for being down 0-1 at the break]. But these changes are part of Japan’s basic strategy, which is to use second-half substitutions to alter the contest.

By using hard-pressing players up front like Maeda and Ito in the starting lineup, they try to wear out the defenders and midfielders with constant running. Then you bring on the likes of Mitoma, Minamino and Asano, who can run at the defenders, and take advantage of their tired legs, and you shift to a new formation and style of play. The change, when it is made, disrupts the other team’s play and they are forced to make adjustments they might not want to make. (I think they WERE successful to some extent, in their strategy of wearing down the German defense, but it was mainly because the German players were all rushing forward looking for goals.)

The problem in the first half was that Japan could not hold the ball up in midfield, when they had possession. For the entire first half Germany had almost constant control of the ball, because apart from one or two counterattacks, Japan’s possession was all deep in their own end.On this point I think Kubo is a huge liability. He just cant hold the ball under pressure. Id give Soma a chance against Costa Rica, though in truth, Minamino might be the best choice for the Spain (and any subsequent) contests. You need to have wide midfielders who can carry the ball in midfield and not just get shoved off it.

Anyway, the point is that Moriyasu’s philosophy against the heavyweights (Germany, Spain etc) is to let the opponent develop a certain style and mindset, as well as (hopefully) use up a lot of energy, in the first half. Then he makes his five changes, and tries to win the game in the second half. That was the game plan from the start, and not some reaction to Germany’s dominance in the first half (though obviously, that was the reason why Kubo was the first to leave). This is a basic part of Moriyasu’s philosophy, so you can expect to see substitutes continue to play an important role in matches going forward.

I know it is hard to really understand how far behind Australia have fallen unless you can compare it to something concrete. The best I can offer is this video of my own local club, Ventforet Kofu’s U-12 team in the match that sent them to the 2016 Danone Cup, in France.

It isnt just the quality of play from the kids (best VFK U12 team Ive ever seen, by a good margin). Look at the facilities. The support. The commercial backing. This is pretty much what you will find at any J1-linked youth program in Japan (Ventforet are a midtable J2 club!) How many U12 teams in Australia get this sort of support?

I know it is hard to really understand how far behind Australia have fallen unless you can compare it to something concrete. The best I can offer is this video of my own local club, Ventforet Kofu’s U-12 team in the match that sent them to the 2016 Danone Cup, in France.

It isnt just the quality of play from the kids (best VFK U12 team Ive ever seen, by a good margin). Look at the facilities. The support. The commercial backing. This is pretty much what you will find at any J1-linked youth program in Japan (Ventforet are a midtable J2 club!) How many U12 teams in Australia get this sort of support?

Two things
First, the level of competition in Asia is steadily rising, and for all the underlying athletic potential it enjoys, Australia has a smaller population than nearly all the main “rising stars” in the region. That suggests that it is no major embarassment to miss a WC … but it also means that if you DO want to be there, you have to *work at it* (that is to say, every country not just Australia needs to stay constantly at the top of their game). Oz isnt the only country struggling to keep up. Just look at China FFS! Australia NT fans have to stop pretending that Asia is a relatively non-competitive region where they really *deserve* to qualify every four years. That is clearly not the case. From the standpoint of dispelling delusions, maybe missing Qatar22 would be a useful wakeup call.
Second, Australia’s shortcomings in terms of individual technical skill and group cohesiveness are nothing new. In the past, the areas of weakness could often be offset by the advantages that Australians (usually) possess in physical speed/size/strength, but the disparity in these areas is slowly disappearing as other teams get better (and bigger). When the likes of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Iraq (to say nothing of China, India and the Xxx’stans) catch up in physical/athletic prowess. . .
Ive watched for two decades as these blindingly obvious shortcomings have been ignored, denied, dismissed and disputed without either the A-League or the NT organization ever actually doing something about it. Unless you develop the fundamental technical skills before age 18, youll never really catch up. Yet Australia still doesnt have a professionally run structure to develop U-12 and U16 players.
Twenty years ago there were dozens of Ozzies who were talented enough to attract interest from J1 clubs. Its true, the ones who really had an “impact” did so because of unique physical and athletic attributes, not technical skills. But most had the basic ball skills needed to play at that level. Nowadays, I cant think of many (any? at least excluding goalkeepers) Aussies who could attract a J.League bid. Even J2 teams view Thais, Viets and Indonesians as better prospects. Sooner or later, Australia will either address their OBVIOUS shortcomings by establishing a strong, nationwide youth development programme and a “deeper” league structure . . . or they wont.
Simple as that

Langerak is the starting ‘keeper, and made some critical saves to earn Grampus a point, today.

Not going to try to dig any deeper on the “Head & Shoulders” claim?

Fair enough. It would be even nicer if you could admit that you were talking bollocks. But Im happy to drop it.
Hope you enjoy the show.

. . . but at least theyve finally chosen a coach who has some idea of how to build a coherent squad.

Yoon Jung-Hwan is one of the best coaches ever to ply his trade in the J.League. It probably will take him more than one season to turn JEF into a J1-level competitor, but at least the prospects are better than theyve been in years.

Be sure to read about their PRE-history as well
(coming from an original Flugels fan)

http://www.jsoccer.com/new/1998 (scroll down)

Oh dear! I feel so embarrassed. I am afraid I owe everyone an apology. My previous post was not factually accurate. I recall thinking to myself after the Kanagawa Derby, last year, that the Marinos had clinched the title. Therefore I wrote: “Winning the league on the penultimate week of the season …”
I am SO sorry for that error. In actual fact, FC Tokyo still had a mathematical chance to win the title in the head-to-head match, if they had won by four or more goals.
So the truth is, Yokohama did not clinch the title until the FINAL day of the season.
OK . . . carry on making your argument about “Head & Shoulders” . . .

Im afraid youve both lost me.
Nobody ever suggested the Marinos were not deserving champions in 2019.
I only objected to the suggestion that they were “head and shoulders above the competition” (and lets not forget, that comment suggested that it is true NOW. In 2020.)

Winning the league on the penultimate week of the season is not sign of “head and shoulders above..” dominance. If you are arguing that it is … well then, every league in the world has one team that is “head and shoulders above” every other. At least if logic still applies.

You guys are pathetic. You probably argue with your mother about who your father was. I shouldve known better than to comment. Good Grief!

I agree that the Marinos were hot at the end of last season. But the run-in was deceptive for many reasons.
First and foremost, their main competition (FC Tokyo, Kashima, and to a lesser extent Frontale and Sanfrecce) played the run-in at half strength. And for Kashima, even that may be an exaggeration – they sold FIVE players in July who had all been starters at the start of the season. Tokyo lost Kubo, Oh Jae-suk and then had injuries to Nagai and Oliveira. Frontale and Sanfrecce seemed to lose half their squad to injuries. This year is a very different picture. Kashima is still rebuilding but Tokyo, Kawasaki and Hiroshima all made replacements that will address the problem.
But more importantly lets look at the teams Marinos played down the stretch (starting from Sep 28):
Vegalta – Jubilo – Bellmare – Sagan – Consadole – Yamaga – Frontale – FCTokyo
Apart from those last two (and at a stretch, MAYBE Sapporo), all of those are relegation-area teams.
That run-in doesnt look quite as impressive anymore… does it?

“A team that is dour, hard to like for a neutral, but with passionate fans, an Atletico Madrid like in the J-League. A team that parks the bus, but their fans don’t care.”

The logical choice has gotta be Vegalta Sendai.
Youll love the mascot, too . . .

You watched the Xerox Cup?

Oh. I guess not.
Ill help you out then. Yokohama lost on PKs after a 3-3 draw. And never lead.
As I said — Ange plays a high-risk/high return game. It looks great when it works. When it doesnt. . . . it doesnt.

Most informed comment Ive seen on this article.
Ange plays a high-risk / high-return style. It can be great to watch, but it can also fail spectacularly. People who are trying to “soften the blow” by suggesting that Marinos are “head and sholders above the rest” in the J.League clearly havent watched much J.League. In terms of teamwork / commitment to the strategic system, theyre up there NEAR the top, but in terms of actual skills, depth and overall competitiveness, they are only “above average”. My own (informed but hardly “reliable”) prognostication suggests that they could very easily finish sixth or lower this season. The disparity in competitiveness in J1 is virtually nonexistent

That’s one of the best parts of following the J.League.

😂 😂 😂 😂 😂

Be sure to include a few Ventforet recommendations in there … Ill throw in one XXXXL rain slicker for good measure 😁 ⚽

Great article. Sounds like you enjoyed the experience 😛

Uhhhhhh . . . . great game?
No. It wasnt that great a game. Particularly since the “meaning” of the contest evaporated as soon as Theerathon’s chip hit the strings. The obvious efforts by the officiating team to preserve some tiny vestige of suspense was even more annoying. How can anyone who watched Kubo’s stunning 91st-minute winner in 2003 (much less the final day dramas in 2005 and 2011) call this game “the greatest in J.League history”

But it definitely WAS a great title run. The team hit some snags earlier in the stretch run, but it is pretty clear that Ange has finally found a group of players who will put his high-risk, high-return philosophy into action, and not experience second thoughts or doubts. Look at the play that got Park sent off. Marinos have been punished at least a half-dozen times this year because of the “keeper/sweeper” philosophy, and a lot of goalkeepers would have let the large number of embarassing, 50-meter loop shots dissuade them from playing so aggressively. But that is exactly what the Ange philosophy calls for, in order to be successful 9 times out of 10.

Im a bit less optimistic about how his “style” would play out in Europe. I think youd have a lot of the same second-guessing and friction that made it so hard for him to implement his plans in Australia (at least as NT coach). But it certainly does work in Yokohama.

That was a very misleading contest, and I wouldnt be at all surprised if Jamie Joseph intended it that way. The biggest factor of all to consider, though, is that Fukuoka was injured (ribs) just six minutes after kickoff, and left the pitch (I think it was Isileli Nakajima who replaced him). Up to that point Japan had been playing with the tempo and width they showed against Scotland and Ireland. But soon after he went out the Bokke got their first try and it took 20 minutes for the players to get their heads back into the game.
Dont have the full lineup in front of me but I think the squad named for Sunday has five or six different names in the mix (not including Fukuoka, who is back to fully fit as he showed last week). iirc that included Leitch (who came on before HT like he did against Russia) and Himeno (who didnt play at all until the Russia match). My point isnt that the task is any less monumental . . . just that the match in Kumagaya is the WORST evidence on which to base an analysis.

I agree with Ben – there’s no way Grampus would ever let him move … particularly not to a domestic competitor. He has been a steady presence between the sticks, and Grampus has a habit of sticking with the same guy for a full career.

Mike, the coaching system may be less a problem with the coaches as it is a problem with management. The combination of Mikitani’s demand for quick results with his personal relationships to players (Iniesta and Podolski in particular) makes the coach’s job impossible. I have to preface by saying that Iniesta has kept his head down, done his job and avoided any prima donna behaviour; but it was always clear that Podolski and Villa were only there to “be stars”, and not to do any of the grunt work necessary to build up a team. You might manage to cover up for the “laziness” of one high-paid foreign superstar, but when there are two or three in the lineup who cant be bothered to run unless the ball is at their feet, and contribute practically nothing on defense (NB: even Iniesta himself was never known for heroic defending), the result is the most unhappy, internally divided team in the entire J.League. That even includes Coach Brylcreem Bosozoku and his rapidly aging Reds.

I was on the fence about Ange until he moved to Yokohama, and even there, I had some doubts about his quality over the course of last year (though more to do with his human-management skills than his strategic and tactical ideas). But there is no question that he has made the adjustment to a new competition and . . . though not abandoning his basic philosophy . . . .tailoring it to the specific strengths and weaknesses of the J.League.

To be honest I never spent THAT much time trying to analyse the things Ange was doing with Australia. The general ideas were obvious, and just as obviously, Australia was having a hard time implementing them. I agreed with all the people who said that the philosophy did not fit his players, but as for whether it was a shortcoming of the strategy or a shortcoming of the players, I couldnt venture a guess. But now that I see it being implemented at Marinos, I have developed a much clearer picture of exactly what he is trying to do when he insists that his team plays the ball out from the back (even against Manchester City), and maintain an offside line as close to midfield as possible. The team still doesnt have it down perfectly, but they are getting close.

I still have some doubts about whether it is a “good” strategy for a team that expects to challenge regularly for league titles. It is a very high-risk / high-reward philosophy, and I think Marinos could be in a position for rewards even without that much risk. But Ive changed my mind on whether he was justified in what he did with the ‘roos. Youre in charge of a national team that is almost certain to clear the first hurdle (AFC qualification) no matter WHAT you do, but which lacks technical quality. If you want to go anywhere at the World Cup you need a strategy that takes some risks. Now that Ive seen what Ange’s approach CAN do, I think he was entirely right to stick with it as NT coach.