Ghana spoils Nishino's debut, beating Japan 2-0 in friendly

JFA replaced a bad coach with a worse one. The man has no personality and tetterred on the brink of a heart attack from the first minute.

He did not see that Japan was loosing the game in the midfield. Made the wrong substitutions as a consequence. Japan’s main weakness is and always has been the goalkeeper, and I see no one better than Kawashima unfortunately, 2nd problem the inability to score.

If the coach had any personality he would not have played this game. It was always a mistake. They should now go to Russia and play 2 games there, not in other European locations.

Lucky, so lucky FIFA went mad and wants 48 teams in Qatar or this would have been Japans last worldcup.

But Japan could get hit hard in the group games.

I ever seen like yesterdays match against Ghana national team by command of our new manager(??!!) who was controversially picketed up by JFA...so rubbish choices.I think we'll come back from Russia with no wins or no goals....so disappointed.

So... bring on the JFA excuses and Team Japan's defenders. They'll say it's not Nishino's fault, but someone it was the reason the previous coach got canned. They'll say he's just getting used to it, forgetting that it's not the best time to start adapting to things, and losing, when the WC is coming up.

""We had chances but couldn't capitalize so it's a disappointing result,"

Once again, this has ALWAYS been Japan's problem, and no coach can change that. How many balls did Honda give to the fans in the stands this time, for example?

Thought Japan came back with the right attitude after the break, created a few chances but they just couldn't score. The penalty was a bit harsh ('nice' dive though) but J's gk should have known better. Very clumsy.

Bottom line is this squad isn't world class and they'll always struggle against a top 40-50 side. They wouldn't have qualified if they were in the euro or SA confederation.

Is there any better goalkeeper than Kawashima? Even I could save better than him. Honda threw his toys out the pram and got Halilhodzic fired because of his sense of entitlement. He didn't do himself any favours here. The only positive to take out of this match is lower media expectations, and that might lessen the pressure on Japan at the World Cup.

Shameful performance. Japanese football has to stop trying to mimick Italy or Spain style. All the nice passes in open space look good but are useless. The point of the game is to score goals, not pretty passes in midfield under light pressure.

Utterly woeful performance. The attacks-by-the-book by Japan were well telegraphed and Ghana easily got back the players it needed to nip this 'strategy' in the bud. Mincing around in midfield is not going to win you anything. As I've said before, Japan will get mullered at the group stage.

goldorak - I agree, Japan looked good in the first five minutes of the second half until Ghana got that penalty. Nishino probably gave a good pep talk at half time and was right to bring on Kagawa at the start of the second half and take off the greatly overrated Honda in the second half. In fairness to Kawashima, he let in a penalty and a free kick from the edge of the penalty box with very little visibiity on a sodden pitch, so it wasn't a disasterous performance by him, but overall Japan did not look like a world-class side.

Honda's woeful inaccuracy is reminiscent of the hopeless Kitazawa who played for Yomiuri in the 90s and whose shots would end up in the stands more often than not.

Japan needs to stop starting Honda. He has not delivered in a while. They should also relook at their mid fielders as they were not able to provide consistent service to the forwards or into any gaps in the backline. They should also scrap some of their exotic formations and play a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 and never play a single forward high as they don't have anyone who can win in the air or take defenders on 1 v1 as the lone forward high. They should try anything exotic with their formations again as they don't have the talent in the back and at mid-field and looked lost compared to teams in the past whose roles seemed better organized/designed.