The South African adventure has come to an end for the 23 players involved. Some have of course been involved more than others, with 6 players playing every minute (the back 5, plus Honda), while 5 saw no action at all. So how did they get on individually? Well my brief opinions are below, but no doubt we’ll all have slightly differing views on several of them, so let me know what you think ..

Japan went into this match with an unchanged side, which meant Keisuke Honda as the lone man up front again, and a very defensive formation. Japan were set up to play for a point and frustrated the Dutch throughout the first half. The first half possession was overwhelmingly in favour of the Dutch, but in the first 45 minutes Eiji Kawashima was not threatened once so you could say the stifling ..

Takeshi Okada’s pre-match press conference has seen the boss man saying that Japan will take a more positive approach than they did against Cameroon… “I have no intention of telling the team to play for a draw The players are up for it. I mean, what kind of a coach would I be if I told them they couldn’t go for it and to start worrying about goal difference, the Denmark game and what no..

Japan’s final World Cup warm-up match ended in another defeat, this time 2-0 to the Ivory Coast. The goals came courtesy of an early strike in the 13th minute from Didier Drogba another Tulio own goal (this is becoming a habit!), and a second on 79 minutes from Kolo Toure. This time Tulio’s own goal was a deflection from a Drogba free-kick – let’s just hope he’s getting all these thin..

Well that was an interesting match certainly. Japan led for the majority of the match against England only to lose out thanks to two own goals falling to a 2-1 defeat. Japan took the lead after only 7 minutes thanks to a low corner cut back from Yasuhito Endo to Marcus Tulio Tanaka who had lost his marker Glenn Johnson. Tulio fired home first time through the crowd on the goal line. I hope w..

Japan lost the frinedly match with South Korea 2-0 in Saitama infront of an impressive 57,000 crowd. Japan’s line-up was Narazaki; Nakazawa, Konno, Nagatomo; Abe, S.Nakamura (Morimoto 63), Endo (Komano 79), Hasebe, Honda (K.Nakamura 72); Okubo (Yano 87), Okazaki Japan started off with what looked like a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Okubo, Honda and Shunsuke behind Okazaki upfront, but in reality ..