Japan’s men’s soccer team kicks off its 2024 Olympic campaign on Wednesday against Paraguay, and as ever the insistence heading into the Games is that the aim is to return with a gold medal.
Such targets are to an extent par for the course ahead of major competitions — nobody wants to suggest they are going along merely to make up the numbers — and with Japan having lost the bronze medal match at both the 2012 London Games and on home soil at the postponed 2020 Tokyo Games, it will of course be keen to secure a first podium finish since claiming bronze in Mexico City 56 years ago.
With Go Oiwa’s squad being the only one in Paris not to feature any overage players, however, it is clear that this competition also has a vital role to play as a building block on the road toward another grand objective of the Japan Football Association (JFA).
The “JFA Pledge for 2050” declares that the country should be crowned world champions by the middle of this century, with one of the checkpoints on that path being to contest a World Cup semifinal by 2030 — leaving Japan just a couple of tournaments to progress two steps beyond its current best performance of a Round of 16 finish, which it has achieved on four occasions, most recently in 2022.
However fanciful those goals may be, providing the next generation of Samurai Blue stars with vital international experience at tournaments like the Olympics is crucial if the Japanese game is to come anywhere near achieving its long-term ambitions.
“After this all the players can do is try and improve in order to aim for places in the full national team,” Oiwa said when announcing his 18-man squad earlier this month.
“This is the last tournament for players in this age group to compete in, and we’ve been preparing for it for 2½ years.
“We have grown on account of winning the (U-23) Asian Cup, and should be able to approach the Olympics with confidence and a sense of responsibility. We want to show everything we have cultivated over the last 2½ years at this tournament.”
While the absence of overage players for the first time since the 2008 Beijing Games is in part down to the difficulty of calling up an ever-growing contingent of Japanese players at big European clubs, there are also benefits to be had from keeping together the squad that was crowned continental champions in May.
Incorporating players of the caliber of Wataru Endo, Ko Itakura, or Takefusa Kubo — the latter of whom would still have qualified as an underage pick — would undoubtedly have added experience and quality to the group, but by introducing them into the mix in place of previously key players you also run the risk of upsetting the balance of the side.
It is often said that international soccer coaches are impeded by the fact they aren’t able to work with the same players as regularly as their equivalents at the club level, so when offered the opportunity to go with a consistent selection, why upset the rhythm of a recently successful team?
Joel Chima Fujita (age 22), Kota Takai (19), and Yu Hirakawa (23) are three highly talented prospects who should soon be knocking on the senior national team door, for instance, and continuing to trust in them this summer will provide them with the opportunity to add new strings to their bows — just as Endo (at the 2016 Rio Games), Itakura and Kubo (both at the 2020 Tokyo Games) were able to do when participating as underage players at previous Olympics.
Some sensational markers have been laid down by Japan’s men at the Olympics over the years — the 1968 bronze remains a landmark moment in the history of the game in the country, while the 1-0 victory over Brazil at the 1996 Atlanta Games became known as the “Miracle of Miami” (where the match was played). Finally, Japan beat a Spain side featuring Euro 2012 winners Jordi Alba, Javi Martinez, and Juan Mata by the same scoreline in the team’s 2012 opener for the London Games. And make no mistake, any addition to those triumphs in Paris will be gleefully celebrated back home.
But results at the Games aren’t necessarily replicated at later tournaments.
Seven of the players that went on to finish fourth in 2012, for instance, were subsequently in the squad that was eliminated at the group stage of the World Cup in Brazil two years later.
Conversely, Keisuke Honda, Shinji Okazaki, and Yuto Nagatomo were all included in Yasuharu Sorimachi’s all-U-23 selection that lost its three group games in 2008, before demonstrating that the harsh lessons learned from Olympics disappointment can benefit players further down the line as they each played key roles in steering Japan to the Round of 16 at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Success on the pitch is, naturally, always the priority, and there’s no reason Japan can’t make a concerted challenge for a medal in the coming weeks.
Win or lose though, the hope has to be that the experiences gained this summer become vital stepping stones for these young players as they look to create history in the coming years.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.