Heard enough about Japan soccer boss Philippe Troussier recently? OK, I understand. Don't worry, this is not about him. Well, not much. Today, we go one step beyond to the big question: Who would be right for the job as coach of the Japanese soccer team, assuming it's not going to be Troussier?
The question really revolves around one big issue: Should the manager be a foreigner or Japanese?
My heart says go with the Japanese; my head says go gaijin.
In established soccer countries, the national team manager/coach is invariably from the same country -- England's manager is Kevin Keegan, Germany's manager is Erich Ribbeck, Italy's manager is Dino Zoff, etc. This is easy to do as such countries have strong, well-established soccer leagues and international teams, and a large stock of well-tried coaches to choose from.
Japan is not so fortunate. The J. League has only been going for seven years, the national team has little history at international level (sorry guys, a bronze medal at the Olympics just doesn't cut it) and consequently Japan has few players or managers experienced in the fundamentals of running a national side (or even a club side) at the professional level.
Having a national team manager from the same country is the logical choice. Usually such a manager works in the same country as the national team, dealing with many of the players he would need to pick for the team on a daily or weekly basis.
Emotionally, he would have ties to the country and culturally there would be fewer problems. More importantly, he would speak the same language and be able to communicate his ideas directly to the players without the need for an interpreter.
In places like England and Italy, the national team manager is usually a very successful club team manager and automatically commands the respect of the players and, usually, the media. The pool of Japanese coaches is limited and even the best do not always have the support of the media.
The Japanese read a lot of newspapers and often believe what's written in them. The old maxim of "say something long enough or loud enough and people will start to believe it" is well suited to this country. Conversely, it is often the case that the media in Japan don't speak up when they should, don't criticize when they should and don't write the truth when they should.
As a result, the Japanese public is not as informed as it should be. Unfortunately, this does not lessen the power of the press. The sports dailies here can be every bit as vocal as England's voracious tabloids and every bit as inaccurate.
Consadole Sapporo boss Takeshi Okada, arguably Japan's best candidate for the job as national team manager, refuses to be considered as a candidate for the job. Why? Quite simply, because he's done it before when he took over from Shu Kamo in 1997 during the World Cup qualifying campaign. Okada was a hero when he turned Japan's World Cup qualifying campaign around and led the team to France '98.
But when he cut superstar Kazu Miura and Tsuyoshi Kitazawa from his squad shortly before the World Cup finals, Okada was crucified in the press -- to such an extent that his wife and children suffered taunts from unhappy fans (the family was forced to change its phone number and the eldest son was so scared he asked for a bodyguard to accompany him home from school).
Okada, who was both a popular and capable manager, stayed with the team through the finals -- where it lost three out of three games -- and could have stayed on as boss, but he said no, citing the pressure as being too great to bear.
But the pressure isn't likely to stop with the media. In this sempai-kohai land, pressure can be brought to bear from various outside sources. It may be to play a certain player or adapt certain tactics or just keep your mouth shut, and it will most likely come from those deemed to be your superior/senior, even if those people are complete dorks. The manager who doesn't play by the rules here may suffer further down the line, like when he's an ex-manager of Japan and is looking for a job. (For a close example, remember Cha Bum Gun, the former South Korean manager who was banned for five years from working in South Korea after turning on his "masters.")
The pressure on a Japanese manager can be insidious and it would take a very, very strong personality to survive. It is questionable whether any of the Japanese candidates would be able to survive such pressure.
It might not be any better for a gaijin manager, but at least he wouldn't be able to read the papers. OK, we can joke about it, but culturally the gaijin manager is a different animal. (OK, we're not going to talk about him, but one of the great things Troussier has done is to constantly remind Japan Football Association officials that they are largely useless. This is one of the reasons why he could lose his job.)
For a start, the foreign manager recognizes Japan's place in the soccer world. While the Japanese media were moaning about Japan's 1-0 losses to Argentina and Croatia at the last World Cup, the foreign media were praising low-ranked Japan for doing so well.
It's a question of perspective, something the Japanese often lack when evaluating their sports stars/teams. If you lack perspective, your judgment is severely curtailed. It's a syndrome that leads to star players being selected because they used to be good and erroneous beliefs being held because that's what people want to believe, not what they see with their own eyes.
One J. League manager I have spoken to emphasized that any manager has to do things his way; you have to have the conviction and willpower to stand or fall on your own decisions, no matter how much pressure you are under to make or change those decisions. He also called into question the ability of Japanese managers to make the tough decisions.
The foreign manager in Japan also comes to Japan cold, i.e., he arrives here with little or no preconceptions about the style of football or capabilities of the Japanese players. For a new national team manager, that's not always a good thing. While he may be independent in his thinking, his knowledge of the players will be limited, and that's one of the problems Troussier (and Falcao before him) has faced.
Selecting a manager who has lived and worked in this country is a completely different prospect. Assuming he's been here a couple of years (a feat in itself), he will have already adapted to the cultural realities of doing business in Japan, and he will have a healthy knowledge of all the players available to him as national team coach. He may not speak Japanese, but he will know how to communicate with the players, club managers and the JFA. One of the biggest criticisms against Troussier is that he hasn't been able to do this or hasn't allowed himself to do this, and this, too, has contributed to the negativity surrounding the Frenchman.
Where does all this leave us? It leaves us with Arsene Wenger . . . four years ago. At that time, he was Mr. Perfect and there's no one who fits that profile exactly at the moment, although there are a number of good candidates if the Japan manager's job suddenly becomes vacant.
These might, or might not, include Akira Nishino, Kashiwa Reysol boss and 1996 Atlanta Olympic coach when Japan beat Brazil; Masakuni Yamamoto, currently Troussier's assistant and Nishino's assistant in Atlanta; Steve Perryman, highly respected English player and Asian Cup Winners' Cup-winning manager of Shimizu S-Pulse; Ossie Ardiles, 1978 Argentine World Cup winner and former Shimizu S-Pulse boss, now Yokohama F. Marinos manager; Eddie Thompson, ex-Australia manager, currently Sanfrecce Hiroshima manager; Terry Venables, former Barcelona and England manager and one of the best coaches in the world, currently unemployed; Aime Jacquet, France's World Cup-winning boss in 1998, currently unemployed; Zico, former Brazil superstar, connected to Japan since start of J. League and technical director at Kashima Antlers; Holger Osieck, excellent manager of Urawa Reds in 1995-96 and currently impressing as manager of Canada, the recent winner of the CONCACAF Gold Cup; Pierre Littbarski, former German star, played for JEF United and now manager of JFL champion Yokohama FC.
It has been suggested that some of these (and others) could team up together, perhaps former Tottenham Hotspur teammates Terry Venables and Steve Perryaman, or Nishino and a foreign assistant, or a foreign manager and Takeshi Okada as assistant. These really are future considerations. Now is the time to put one man in charge and let him get on with the job. If he needs any help, he can request it later.
What Japan needs right now is a manager who has the confidence of the JFA, the media, the fans and the players. And if the manager can give the players belief in their own abilities, success will come and the manager's job will suddenly look like a piece of cake.