The short, unhappy reign of former national team manager Javier Aguirre has cast a long shadow over Japanese soccer, but replacement Vahid Halilhodzic will care for nothing but the future when he leads the team out for the first time on Friday.
Japan takes on Tunisia in a friendly in Oita just over two weeks after the Japan Football Association named Halilhodzic as Aguirre's successor, having fired the Mexican due to his involvement in a match-fixing investigation in Spain. The circumstances of Halilhodzic's appointment are far from ideal, but the Bosnian is unlikely to give it a second thought as he sets about getting to grips with a new team in a new country with World Cup qualifiers looming in June.
Halilhodzic's first squad, featuring 31 players and a further 12 on stand-by, should give him a useful crash course in the personnel at his disposal. Only two players have been dropped from the squad that lost to the United Arab Emirates in the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup in January, while there are enough new faces to freshen things up with another friendly against Uzbekistan still to come next Tuesday.