World Cup 2010 Japan vs. Cameroon with Japan in prospective. Japan just happened to be one of the toughest team in the Asian football region, Japan, who won three of the last five championships of the AFC Asian Cup, have very high expectation for winning the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. This will be their fourth appearance at the global competition.
First on the list is an upgrade on the unsatisfactory performance at Germany 2006, when the Samurai Blue won 3-1 in their first hurdle and a reverse happened versus Australia, Croatia got a draw 0-0 and a loss with Brazil 4-1. Japan will face their first finals without Hidetoshi Nakata their iconic midfielder. The former Roma featured in each of the national games at France 1998, Korea/Japan 2002 and Germany 2006 before deciding to leave the game and retire, hang up his boots after the event at age 29.
Going to the road leading to South Africa, after comfortably reaching the final round of the Asian Zone qualifying for South Africa 2010, Japan got four, drew three and lost just one on their eight matches on Group 1. A 2-1 turn around in Australia and a heart breaking draw 0-0 at home versus the same teams were the draw back of the final phase, in spite of the fact that coach Takeshi Okada’s team was able to finish well clear of Qatar, Bahrain, and Uzbekistan in the five-team section.
The Japan star players are Shunsuke Nakamura a former Celtic playmaker, who in the summer 2009 made the swap from Glasgow to La Liga with Espanyol. Another European-based performer is Keisuke Honda young midfielder at Eredivisie outfit VVV Venlo and similar to Nakamura a gifted left-footer. Their leading from the back is Captain Yuji Nakazawa a 31-year-old defensive rock and who has over 90 senior caps to his credit is Japan’s entire time third-most capped player.
Their coach is National supremo Okada. He is far and wide taken into account to be one of the finest Japanese strategists of all time. He was at the driver seat during the Samurai Blue’s first appearance in FIFA World Cup at France 1998; he was able to successfully negotiate a complicated play-off meeting with Iran, and after that enjoyed spells at club level with Yokohama F Marinos and Consadole Sapporo.
