The Japanese national team had a game against El Salvador on last Thursday, 15 June. In this article, I will focus on performance of Celtic’s Japanese Bhoys. If you want to know about their interviews after the game, please read the other article I released earlier on The Celtic Star.

First, I will share the highlight link as follows…

Next, you can check the starting Ⅺ and information about formations, stats, and reviews from this LINK.

And you can read the match report from this LINK.

First of all, my focus on Reo Hatate, who played as left inside half in this game. Immediately after start of the game, he dominated midfield by perfectly completing the role of Linkman, which he has been doing since last season at Celtic.

When Morita held the ball for build-up, the scene that Reo received the ball smoothly from Morita and sent pass to Mitoma on the left by clever positioning was impressive. Mitoma and Reo on left side used to play together in Kawasaki Frontale, so they activated attack by flexibly switching their positions.

When Mitoma dribbed from left side to centre, Reo switched to left side and gave Mitoma the choice of pass and shoot. Also, Doan, who played as right inside half, is characterised by intuitive and creative play, so when he dribbled, Reo tried to maintain the balance of formation by moving position a little behind.

In addition to his flexible and skilful positioning, it was amazing that he kept sending effective passes to forwards many times around attacking area. Despite replacement of midfield and side players from second half, formation of attack did not collapse significantly due to his flexible positioning. He couldn’t score goals or assists, but combination between players who played from the second half and Reo was outstanding, so I think he established himself as important player necessary for the team. I will introduce his performance, which was particularly impressive in Thursday’s game, along with his words in the interview as follows.

#キリンチャレンジカップ 2023🏆
🇯🇵 #サッカー日本代表 vs エルサルバドル🇸🇻

試合開始早々の1分、#久保建英のクロスに #谷口彰悟が頭で合わせて、#SAMURAIBLUE が先制⚽

📺#フジテレビ系列で生放送中‼
📱💻#TVer でライブ配信中
🔗https://t.co/6xGargWAio #夢への勇気を #jfa #daihyo… pic.twitter.com/NVnmCXtBYp

— サッカー日本代表 🇯🇵 (@jfa_samuraiblue) June 15, 2023

Focus on the scene of free kick for 1 min after start of second half. Reo, who played the role of corner/free kick taker with Kubo in this game, communicated with Kubo just before this free kick. That’s this scene.

Reo said the following in an interview after the game. “I advised Kubo just before the free kick, “From this angle, it might be better to aim for far side.”

Based on his advice, Kubo kicked a free kick towards far side. And that led to the goal. I guess that Kubo referred to Reo’s words because his teammates including Kubo highly evaluated performance Reo has been doing at Celtic, and because he has built relationship of trust with his teammates.

これが旗手なんよな pic.twitter.com/xJ8E9Iu3ia

— Aoi (@9Ohh0) June 16, 2023

Another impressive play is this through pass sent to Ueda in 9 mins of the second half. He didn’t miss space between opponent’s defenders immediately after he received the ball from Kubo. What I want to focus on is that Reo did not send a pass to left side space, but dared to take a risk and make a challenging pass. He said in a interview as follows.

“In this season, my most developed part is mental. Having experienced Champions League, I was able to challenge more aggressive performance by playing without fear of making mistakes. This may be the part that I was able to brush up more this season due to my mental development.

“Of course, I’m trying to challenge on the premise that I don’t make mistakes, but even if I try to do so, it’s impossible to eliminate any mistakes. So I don’t think negative about making mistakes, but trying to challenge without fear of making mistakes, so I’ll never make negative mistakes anymore.”

I guess that his choice to do this pass in this scene is exactly testament to his mental development.

He showed great combination with side back Morishita and left winger Nakamura, who played from the second half. During the game, there were many scenes that he actively communicated with other players by gestures and words. He continued to perform creative performances like that captivated fans at Celtic until the whistle in this game.

Focus on Kyogo’s off-the-ball movement🔥pic.twitter.com/0jNECDCb1m

— Yatao (@yataoda4) June 15, 2023

Next, I will focus on the movement of off-the-ball just before Kyogo’s goal. The state of taking his eyes off the ball and turning his back against the ball is contrary to theory of forward’s movement in set play, but he did it. As he said in the interview, I guess that by building relationship of trust with teammates in training, he was able to make a move to take the mark of of him by believing that Soma would send a pass to him. In addition, even though he turned away from the ball and rotated, the reason why he was able to score a goal without losing sight of the ball is because he has excellent spatial grasping ability and predictive ability. His off-the-ball movement was very impressive other than this scene.

As you know, Japanese players tend to try to move and play with disciplined according to tactics. On the other hand, the lack of creativity in our play has been a long-standing problem. It depends on Japanese coaching methods and personality of Japanese, so it’s the part that we couldn’t do anything about until now. However, for football school coach and children who watched his movements in this game, their stereotype may have been overturned. Since this game, many Japanese medias have begun to focus on his skillful off-the-ball movement, so I hope that his performance will be an opportunity to transform Japanese football, which requires more accurate play, into something more creative.

Daizen works hard on training in his hometown, Osaka. There is high possibility that he’ll play as striker in the game v Peru on June 20th. pic.twitter.com/58u8QgZwx0

— Yatao (@yataoda4) June 17, 2023

That’s all. Unfortunately, Daizen Maeda was not given time to play in this game, he did not play as a winger, but in the game against Peru tomorrow 20 June, he may plays as a winger or striker. In yesterday’s training, he played mini-games and shoot training as striker instead of Ueda, who left the team due to injury.

In my next article, I will focus on what Celtic’s Japanese Bhoys answered in interviews after training for the game against Peru.

Yatao

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