ITALY Tour 2014 Training Match 1st Game
Saturday 4 October 2014   Kickoff 20:00 20min x 2
Palaroma(Pescara, Italy)

Futsal Japan National Team　3-2(1st 2-0、2nd 1-2)　Acqua&Sapone Emmegross

Scores
8min 　YOSHIKAWA Tomoki(Futsal Japan National Team)
11min  NAGAI Yoshifumi(Futsal Japan National Team)
32min  WATANABE Tomoaki(Futsal Japan National Team)
33min  Goal against (Acqua&Sapone Emmegross)
38min  Goal against (Acqua&Sapone Emmegross)

Startes
GK：SEKIGUCHI Yushi
FP：INABA Kotaro、WATANABE Tomoaki、MINAMOTO Akira,YOSHIKAWA Tomoki

Substitutes
GK：FUJIWARA Jun
FP：ARAMAKI Taro, SATO Toru, NAGAI Yoshifumi、KATO Ryuma、KITAJIMA Yuichi、MORI Shuta

Non-registered member(Suspension,injury,etc)
FP：MORIOKA Kaoru、TAKITA Manabu

Match Report

On Saturday 4th, Japan National Futsal Team took on Acqua & Sapone Emmegross C5 in their first one of the six training matches during their Italy tour.
Prior to the match at noon, the squad made a courtesy visit to Pescara City Hall. When the team presented the mayor with their kit, he posed for the photo, putting it on on the spot.
The match against last year’s cup champions Acqua & Sapone Emmegross C5 kicked off at 8 pm.

After Yoshikawa opened the scoring from a kick-in in the 8th minute, Nagai doubled the lead from a corner kick in the 11th before Japan ended the first half at 2-0.
In the second half, while Japan struggled with the pressure by the opponents trying to find a goal and then the deadlock continued, Watanabe found another goal to widen the lead in the 32nd minute. Japan conceded goals in the 33rd and 38th, allowing the opponents to erase the gap to one goal. But eventually they edged them 3-2 to win the first match of their Italy tour.
The match finished late, so the squad had dinner outside. As national team debutant Aramaki had his birthday on the day, they celebrated him altogether with a cake after dinner.
The second training match is coming up on 6th.

Comments

Miguel Rodrigo, Head Coach
With the squad welcoming new comers, we could play the match at this level through only the two-day practice after landing Italy. That’s a positive surprise. We truly deserved the win because they performed excellent in both offence and defence. Against the opposition who have good defence challenging us from up front, we dominated the possession and created a lot of outnumbering scenes just as we wanted to do. I’m happy to see the two goals from set pieces, which we had worked on in our training sessions.
In the second half with the lead, the opposing pressure was enhanced as expected, so all we could do was play on counter-attacks after defending to find chances. But goalkeeper Sekiguchi saved us to hold on to our lead as we added another goal. Snatching the victory against the opponents who won the cup championship and reached the league final is not an ordinary win but a huge win for us.

WATANABE Tomoaki（Nagoya Oceans）
Today I took the game captain’s role for the first time. We had the match after only a few practices with new comers, but we played our game, communicating with each other. The opponents were last year’s cup champions, so their strong offence forced us to spend a lot of time for defending in the second half. But it was great that we could manage to escape from that spell and to battle it out for the win.
I’ve had Spain trips many times, but it was the first time for me to have a match against Italian club team. Italian players had different individual skills from Spanish. Even against such opponents, as long as we represent Japan, I try to stick to a win, even in training matches. On that basis, we will try to clear out each issue that may come up along the way, play our game and work hard for the remaining matches. We rarely have opportunities where we can play six games against Italian teams, so we would like to spend the rest of the time well to capitalise on them and make this trip fruitful. For the first thing, I will rest my body to recover and get ready for the upcoming four straight games. Individually, I will work hard to contribute to our goal in the remaining matches just like today.

ARAMAKI Taro (Bardral Urayasu Futbol Sala)
After the short preparation spell of two days, I got in the game with the moderate sense of nervousness for the first ever match as a Japanese international. For the reason, I had a number of teammates who I know well, and coach Miguel provided us with simple explanation on the key point. If there was anything that he wasn’t sure, he asked a player. And I tried to convey what I was trying to do. In terms of the game, we have some period that made us defend for a while, but we also could create some occasions where we took our attacking rhythm. But we could’ve put more time for our offence. And the key point to decide win or lose during this trip is how we can get into the critical area from the back, so we will focus on it for the remaining five games.

Schedule

*Local time