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Karl
Senior Member
USA
914 Posts |
 Posted - Oct 10 2002 : 7:12:54 PM
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philosophies.
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Chin
Zico changes things in Japan....
Thu Oct 10 13:58:12 2002
152.163.189.170
Shintaro Kano Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter
New Japan manager Zico isn't wasting any time taking apart the structure Philippe Troussier built over the past four years.
Zico, who on Monday named a party of 22 for his first match against Jamaica on Wednesday night, appears set to take the national team on a different course than his predecessor.
While Zico, a three-time Brazil World Cup star and former technical director of the most successful club in J.League history, Kashima Antlers, said he respected Troussier's coaching philosophy, he clearly has other ideas--very Brazilian ones, as opposed to Troussier's very French ones--for Japan.
Despite saying when he took over that he would choose a formation most suited to the players, Zico said he will drop the 3-5-2 formation Troussier stubbornly stuck too after taking over in September 1998, and replace it with a 4-4-2, the lineup traditionally preferred by the Brazilian national side. (The Selecao's latest World Cup-winning coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, was a notable exception. He opted for a 3-5-2 at Korea-Japan 2002.)
Zico said his star-studded, marketable players could adapt to any formation, from a 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2 to a 4-3-3.
But he seems keen, at least at this early stage, to find the right combination of talent to make it work.
He is giving players of all ages a chance to make the lineup work, as evidenced by his selection of veteran Antlers defenders Yutaka Akita and Akira Narahashi, and yet-to-blossom talents Jubilo Iwata defender Makoto Tanaka and Urawa Reds defender Nobuhisa Yamada.
Troussier, by contrast, decided early on in his reign, after the last Asian Games in 1998 and the 1999 World Youth Champion-ship in Nigeria, that he was going to build his team around a young and talented core that included Feyenoord's Shinji Ono, Fulham's Junichi Inamoto, Antlers' Koji Nakata and Jubilo's Naohiro Takahara.
The Frenchman believed the up-and-coming group was as talented as the more seasoned players in the league, but more open and flexible to new strategies and ideas.
However, Zico, who is holding on to the bulk of Troussier's fledglings who shone for Japan at the World Cup in the summer, has not written off the veterans who are still getting the job done at club level.
The Brazilian said: "I don't discriminate by age. Players in their 30s, like (Masashi) Nakayama and (Yasuto) Honda are still leading their teams with a lot of energy. In Japan, if you're labeled a 'veteran,' you're basically considered over the hill, that you can't play at the top level any longer.
"But that is not the case. I know. I played into my 40s."
Yet Zico's door isn't open to Division Two players, whereas Troussier's was.
Troussier picked the J2 Cerezo Osaka pair of Akinori Nishizawa and Hiroaki Morishima for his World Cup squad, but the two were not on Zico's list for the Jamaica match.
Zico has said he will not tolerate players who save themselves for the national team. If they didn't do so, he said, their clubs wouldn't be struggling in the first place.
Twelve of the 17 Japan-based players in the squad for the Jamaica match ply their trade with Antlers or Jubilo, who together have won the last six league championships.
Zico, in essence, only wants winners.
"What I'll ask of them is what they usually give for their clubs. I won't expect anything less," he said. "I want them to do what they do best and I won't ask for more."
He will also make team activity more transparent to the public. Troussier never gave out his starting lineups before games, and even kept his players guessing until match day. Zico, on the other hand, has already named his likely starting XI for next Wednesday.
Zico also said he would make all training sessions open to the media, noting that Brazil, who conduct open training sessions, won the last World Cup.
Under Troussier, almost all practice was conducted behind closed doors, and toward the end of his reign, he only opened up 15 minutes (the minimum required by FIFA) of training camps that typically lasted two or three days.
And while Troussier experimented with his team from game to game all the way to the World Cup, Zico wants to make every match a win-or-lose situation for the Japanese eyeing Germany 2006.
"It's important to win. I would like to get things started with a victory," Zico said.
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Karl |
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Zico & Troussier - A peek into the two contrasting
