Japan's Coach Is Having the Last Chuckle - 世足

Japan's Coach Is Having the Last Chuckle

By JERÉ LONGMAN New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/sports/soccer/28japan.html


JOHANNESBURG — Two months ago, a month ago, even two weeks ago, few wanted
to listen to this severe man who is said to write poetry and contemplate
retirement as a farmer.

He was Japan's coach at the World Cup, but who could take Takeshi Okada
seriously? Japan reach the semifinals? A team that had never won a tournament
game away from home? Okada’s prediction of reaching the semifinals seemed
foolish. He became a laughingstock.

And yet, Japan has surprisingly reached the second round, where it will face
Paraguay on Tuesday in Pretoria. Japanese fans are no longer booing the team
or calling for Okada to be fired. Instead, 40 percent of the nation is
watching matches that begin at home in the middle of the night and end around
sunrise.

The most feverishly stricken are jumping into rivers in celebration, as 50
people did in Osaka after Japan's stunning 3-1 victory over Denmark on
Thursday put it into the Round of 16.

"He has a hard personality, no smile, his own decisions always,” Ushiki
Sokichiro, who is covering the World Cup for Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun
newspaper, said of Okada. “He was notorious before. Now, in Tokyo, he is
famous.”

And not yet satisfied. Okada, who is 53, wears glasses and flavors his
remarks with lectures on religion, philosophy and history, has kept urging
his team onward to meet his own unlikely forecast, saying, “We have to go
for more.”

This moment of deliverance for Okada is as remarkable as it is unexpected.
Japan’s buildup to the World Cup was dismal. After it lost to a second-
string Serbian team, 3-0, in an April exhibition, Okada was criticized as
“a bad joke” by Tatsuhito Kaneko, a columnist for the newspaper Sports
Nippon. Kaneko said that a prediction of reaching the World Cup semifinals
was “like ordering the current national team to walk on the moon.”

Fans signed petitions and answered polls, calling for Okada to step down as
the coach. Then things got worse. In late May, after a 2-0 defeat to the
fellow World Cup competitor South Korea, Okada seemed to offer his
resignation to the Japanese soccer federation before saying he had spoken
carelessly.

Even his players questioned Okada’s shift from an attacking style to a
defensive posture in the days before the tournament. Marcus Tulio Tanaka,
a Brazilian-born defender, told his teammates to think for themselves,
saying, “If we play as the coach told us to play, it can hardly help us to
show our stuff.”

Okada coached Japan in the 1998 World Cup, where it was bounced out in the
first round, scoring one goal and losing all three matches. Japan was a co-
host of the 2002 World Cup with South Korea and reached the second round
under another coach, the Frenchman Philippe Troussier. But that was at home.
Japan had never won a World Cup match on foreign soil.

And according to common wisdom, it did not seem likely to do so in South
Africa with Okada returning to take charge in an emergency after his
predecessor had a stroke.

Troussier accused Okada of overreaching, of wanting to play a beautiful
possession game like Spain or Brazil without the caliber of players of those
teams. Japan still had the “same stupid mentality” that it had under Okada
in 1998, Troussier told Reuters in May, adding, “Okada has confusion in his
head.”

There was no confusion, Okada told reporters. South Korea reached the
semifinals in 2002, so why not Japan in 2010? He said he predicted a
finish that balanced his realism and his idealism.

“I thought if I targeted the title, the players wouldn't get serious,” Okada
told reporters before the World Cup. “But if I targeted the quarterfinals,
they wouldn’t get motivated."

As the tournament opened, Okada benched Japan’s most prominent player, the
creative midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura, and played with a lone striker in
Keisuke Honda, a peroxide blond whose skill is authentic even if his hair
color is not. Honda scored the only goal of that match, against Cameroon, and
Japan won a World Cup game away from home for the first time.

“This is not an achievement at all,” Okada admonished his players.
“What’s coming next is the point.”

After a 1-0 defeat to the Netherlands, Okada switched tactics, playing a more
assertive attacking style, and Japan routed Denmark with its one-touch
passing and two goals on free kicks, including one by Honda. While many teams
complained about the official World Cup balls, Japan and South Korea simply
practiced with them until they grew comfortable with their speed and
trajectory.

The semifinals still seem a reach for Japan, which will face Spain or
Portugal in the quarterfinals if it defeats Paraguay. Yet Okada’s
prediction is now taken for what it was — motivation, not madness.

Japan remains transfixed. The final group match with Denmark started at 3:30
a.m. Tokyo time, and fans gathered to watch in cafes, bars and stadiums
around the country. The team at Honda’s former high school watched in its
uniforms. After the victory, Prime Minister Naoto Kan sent a note of
congratulations, saying, “Everyone in Japan is proud and has been inspired.”

Critics are now eating their words. Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager who
formerly coached in Japan, called the Japanese national team “quite a
lightweight” before the tournament. At a dinner with Okada in April, Wenger
told him, “If you get out of this group, they will have to build a statue of
you in the middle of Tokyo.”

Perhaps it is time to hire a sculptor.


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