On the evening of the 9th, the Japanese team and the Jordan team played the last warm-up match before the Asian Cup, and won 6-1 easily, but the game itself is not important, and the Japanese media and fans focused on the strategic goal of "three world-class starting lineups" that Mori Hoichi had previously announced in a high-profile manner. In an interview with TV Tokyo, Mori said that Japan has enough players who have "the strength to compete on the world stage". In order to enhance the strength and depth of the Japanese national team, he said that starting from the international break in March after the Asian Cup, the Japanese national team will have "three starting lineups that can compete with the world's strongest teams" through extensive rotation.
Moriyasu hopes that the Japanese team will recruit as many Japanese players as possible during the future international break, in fact, this kind of large-scale rotation of the Japanese team has been since the end of the 2022 World Cup. On New Year's Day, Japan and Thailand made their national team debuts in five players, including Ryotaro Ito, Kanshi Oba Okata, Yoya Fujii, Sata Miura and Tomu Kawamura, with the first three of them all playing in Europe.
"From now on, we need to recruit players who were previously unable to recruit to form a new starting lineup and look at performance. In order to achieve this ambitious strategic goal, he will implement a new national team selection and match lineup plan starting in March, and through the competition, he will hone into three starting 11 teams of equal strength. Moriyasu emphasized that the scope of the inspection includes players who play in the J1 League and overseas leagues, but he wants to discover the potential of more players and consolidate the talent base for the Japanese team.
Perhaps it is an exaggeration to say that Japan's goal is to win the World Cup, but he also admits that it is only the goal of Japanese football and may not be achieved during his tenure. However, with three starting lineups that can play against the world's top teams, Japanese football does have such a talent base at the moment. Last weekend, Mori Hoichi participated in TV Tokyo's "FOOT×BRAIN New Year's 1-hour special", and when asked by host Masanobu Katsumura about the difficulty of selecting players, he admitted that it was "happy troubles": "I didn't scream with joy because there were so many high-level players, but the choice was really painful. ”
Mori's "Japan Three-Team Plan" is not to send a second team with mainly domestic players in a game like the East Asian Cup, as in the past, but to deploy three different starting lineups in a single international break and ensure that the strength is even.
Mori Boichi dared to take such a risk because Japanese football has a sufficient talent base. So far this season, there are as many as 15 Japanese players playing in the top five leagues, 13 in the five major leagues, 37 in the four European second-rate leagues of the Portuguese Super League, Eredivisie, Belgian League and the Soviet Super League, and 9 in the top leagues of Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland and Romania. In Europe's top 20 major leagues, there are as many as 74 Japanese players, and 8 players play in South Korea, Qatar, and the North American Major League. Just the foreign players who play in the mainstream European leagues are enough for the Japanese team to form 3 complete national teams!
There are 15 Japanese players worth more than 10 million euros, 30 players worth more than 2 million euros, and 75 players worth more than 1 million euros. Of the 30 players worth more than 2 million euros, only Yuma Suzuki, who is Kashima Antlers, plays outside of Europe, and such a strong talent pool can make Moriyasu so bold. He stressed that there will be more Japanese players in Europe in the future, and the range of options will be even greater. Moriyasu wants to play more against European powerhouses and improve his winning percentage against European teams. The European training base built by the Japan Football Association in Düsseldorf, Germany, is the base camp for the Japanese team to train and play in Europe.
There is another important reason why Mori Hoichi and the Japanese Football Association dare to put forward the "three-team plan", that is, Japanese football from youth training to professional clubs, its technical and tactical unity and continuity have a fairly high guarantee, which also provides an internal foundation for the formation of multiple sets of national teams. Of course, Moriyasu's strategy of "three world-class starting lineups" is largely based on the unprecedented confidence that the Japanese team built up over the winning streak of European and American powerhouses last year.
The Japanese national team is already actively planning to build three world-class starting lineups, which is already a huge gap that is almost impossible for the rest of Asia to catch up. Japanese football is indeed moving towards the goal of becoming a world-class team and winning the World Cup.