HANOI — It's no surprise whom Australia 'keeper Mark Schwarzer singled out as Japan's danger man ahead of their Asian Cup quarterfinal match: Shunsuke Nakamura.
And Schwarzer is not looking forward to facing free-kicks from Japan's dead-ball expert.
"Not excited," said a smiling Schwarzer, when asked by a Japanese journalist whether he was excited by the prospect of dealing with a Nakamura curler.
"But we know he is a very talented player and we know he is very good at taking free-kicks so obviously that is a big danger.
"I don't normally sit there and worry about one particular player in a game but you have to be aware of what extra individual talents players do have and obviously Nakamura is one of those players who takes very good free-kicks and is dangerous around the box and a good playmaker.
"He is obviously the player that stands out for Japan. Everybody is talking about him so he is obviously very important."
Australia's Mark Bresciano played against Nakamura in Italy, when the midfielder was at Parma and the Japanese playmaker was at Reggina, and he recalls how difficult it was to deal with Nakamura.
"He is not an easy player to mark and runs around a lot and finds good positions," said Bresciano. "But I can speak from experience, when he was playing in the Italian League we normally had one man on him and tried to mark him out of the game but it is not easy because you lose that man as well."
Maybe Bresciano was just being kind, but Nakamura hardly set Italian soccer alight when he was there. I wouldn't have been surprised if the opposing coach told his players to make sure Nakamura saw a lot of the ball, because he didn't do very much with it when he had it in his possession.
The Aussies have been running a slick media operation since arriving in Hanoi, making life a little easier for the journalists.
The morning after the Socceroos arrived they set up a news conference with Tim Cahill and John Aloisi, the architects of Australia's 3-1 victory over Japan at last year's World Cup.
They'd obviously put a bit of thought into who would be best to talk ahead of the match.
On Thursday, Bresciano and Schwarzer sat down in front of the press at the Sheraton hotel and talked candidly about Saturday's match.
Each time, the players impressed with their willingness to answer questions and their eloquence in doing so.
Mentioning no Japanese national team coaches, but it was a refreshing change.
Things are tougher for the large pack of Aussie journalists who want to speak to the Japanese players. With only one press conference scheduled for the day before the game — when Ivica Osim and one player will be present — the rest of the time the Aussies have to try to speak to the players after training.
And apart from 'keeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, there are not many proficient English speakers among the Japan squad.
Vietnamese midfielder Phan Van Tai Em didn't think much of Vietnam's chances of advancing to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup.
So little in fact that he arranged his wedding party for the same day the cohosts are set to take on Iraq.
Vietnam coach Alfred Riedl, who guided his team to a second-place finish behind Japan in Group B, was obviously none too happy about this lack of faith, but said he didn't want to tell the player to cancel the party because the invites had already gone out.
And so Phan misses out on Vietnam's first appearance in the Asian Cup knockout stages for 47 years.
She better be worth it!