Japan may be perched at the top of its second-round group in Asian qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, but coach Vahid Halilhodzic has branded his team a "third-division" outfit and says he fears for the future of the J. League.
In an end-of-year interview, the Bosnian delivered a bleak assessment of the state of the Japanese game after his first nine months in charge, saying that reaching the finals in Russia is not a foregone conclusion because of a lack of creativity and natural-born strikers.
"Japan are 53rd in the FIFA rankings, so say if 1 through 20 is the first division then ability-wise, that puts us in the world's third division," Halilhodzic said. "We have to improve in every department — technically, tactically, physically and mentally."