I talked to you about my personal views on the performance of the Chinese team in 2021, and today we talk about our opponents. I believe that everyone will have such a feeling that in 2021, the overall performance of the players of the foreign association is not as good as imagined, or it is not as strong as they have shown before. The most representative is Japan, in recent years, the lineup and results of the Japanese team are quite scary, almost 5 individual events can be ranked in the world's top 3, and each single event is very stable. The most important competition in 2021, the Olympic Games, is still held on their doorstep, which can really be said to take advantage of the time and place.
But the reality is that they only got a bronze medal at the doorstep, and the previously strong Momota Kendou did not even qualify from the group, and the women's doubles, who has always said that she had the advantage of the group, did not stand on the podium.
In fact, we will make a hypothesis, if the Tokyo Olympics are not postponed for a year, according to the state of these main forces in Japan in 2020, the result of the Olympic Games may not be the same. However, history cannot assume why the main force of Japan was postponed for a year and then collectively lost its state, and this question is actually worth exploring. When we talk about excellent athletes and excellent teams, we will say that they are adaptable and can keep a good state for a long time. From these two perspectives, Japan is not good enough.
The reason for this, I personally believe, is due to the lack of group advantages. The Japanese team has one person in each of the 5 individual events/ that is definitely world-class, but in addition to the top ones, the players behind them are actually not competitive. In addition to Momota Kendou, Nishimoto Kentai and Tokiyama Kanta are not first-class; women's singles Okuhara Hope and Yamaguchi Akane are very strong, but compared with the Chinese women's singles for a long time in the past, the first line has gathered more than 5 thicknesses that can win the championship; the mixed doubles are only Watanabe Isauda / Higashino Yusha pair. The men's doubles looks like there are three main pairs, but none of them are the top combinations; the women's doubles overall strength is the strongest, but when it comes to the Olympic games, Hirota Caihua is injured, only to find that world champion Matsumoto Mayu/Nagahara and Kona are not so reliable.
Why emphasize the advantages of the group, from the actual combat point of view, having teammates go forward side by side, can be a good way to reduce the burden in their hearts, there is a dependence between each other; from the training point of view, the collision between teammates of the same level and different playing styles is a good way to continuously improve themselves. However, the current Japanese team does not seem to have such a thickness, so it is not easy to maintain a sustained strong state.