New national team manager Vahid Halilhodzic believes he is the man to revive Japan's flagging fortunes, but warns the transformation from Asian Cup flops to World Cup hopefuls will not happen overnight.
Bosnian Halilhodzic arrived in Japan on Friday, a day after being named as the Japan Football Association's replacement for Javier Aguirre, who was fired in February after a match-fixing case naming him as a defendant was accepted by a Spanish court.
Halilhodzic, who led Algeria to a place in the last 16 at last summer's World Cup, comes to the job with Japan at a low ebb having crashed out of January's Asian Cup with a quarterfinal defeat to the United Arab Emirates.