Japan Team for 2010 World Cup

One of the strongest teams to come out of Asia, Japan will be making their fourth appearance at the FIFA World Cup, this time without their iconic midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata. The midfielder starred in all three world Cups that Japan qualified for before making it to the 2010 edition of the World Cup before retiring from international football aged 29.

Out of the eight matches they played in Group 1, Japan won four, drew three and lost one to book a berth at the World Cup right below Australia. Even though Japan beat Bahrain, Qatar and Uzbekistan, it wasn’t enough to stop a 2-1 loss at Australia and then a frustrating 0-0 draw at home against the Aussies. Nevertheless the wins were enough to guarantee a ticket to the finals at South Africa.

 

Former Celtic playmaker Shunsuke Nakamura will be leading the attack from the Japanese side with the help of another left-footer Keisuke Honda from the midfield. The defensive line is held by Captain Yuji Nakazawa who with 113 caps is Japan’s third-most capped player of all time.

 

Coached by Takeshi Okada, who is known as one of the best Japanese coaches of all-time, the Samurai Blue are back for another World Cup. Okada was at the helm of the Japanese team that made it to the World cup finals in 1998. Takeshi Okada held the coach’s post at Consadole Sapporo and Yokohama F Marinos taking the latter to the J.League titles in 2003 and 2004. He was asked to coach the National team for the second time in 2007 after Ivica Osim, the national team coach at that time suffered a stroke.

 

Japan’s fourth consecutive World Cup and the Samurai Blue are looking to better their performance from the 2002 World Cup where they had advanced to the knockout stages. 

 Japanese Football Team for FIFA World Cup 2010

The Pre-World Cup list of players for England is given below.