After the trauma of last week’s defeat to South Korea, Japan salvaged some much-needed confidence — if not a result — against England. But if manager Takeshi Okada decides to stick with the revamped formation that served him so well on Sunday, where does that leave Shunsuke Nakamura?
Okada finally addressed his team’s soft spine in Graz by adding Yuki Abe as a defensive midfielder behind central pairing Makoto Hasebe and Yasuhito Endo, shoring up an area that has long looked in danger of being outmuscled and overrun in South Africa.
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