Ivica Osim
Interview
Ivica Osim answers questions at the Foreign Correspondents'
Club of Japan, Tokyo [21 June, 2007]
 |
Ivica Osim |
TOKYO - Japan coach Ivica Osim spoke to reporters at the Foreign
Correspondents' Club of Japan about the state of his team ahead
of the Asian
Cup tournament being co-hosted by Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia
and Vietnam from July 7-29. While shying away from some potentially
explosive issues, the 66-year- old Bosnian was surprisingly candid
on other topics, including his team's inadequate preparation for
the continental competition, the reason Hidetoshi Nakata retired
from football and the added motivation every Asian team has when
playing Japan. It was an entertaining afternoon to say the least.
A transcript of the session follows:
Do you think your team is stronger than the one Zico led
to the World Cup? Please elaborate on the strengths of your team
and the differences between Zico's team and your team now.
It wouldn't be very elegant of me to comment on someone who was
coach for four years.
Zico is a great name in football, whether it be as a player or a
trainer. I really don't like the idea of comparing what he did and
what I'm doing. I'm just trying to coach the best that I can. I
can say that Zico did an excellent job during the World Cup. The
situation then was that the information that the Japanese had was
very poor. Maybe even the information that Zico and the players
had was very poor.
Just to reach the qualifying stages was really very good. But because
of the bad information, or lack of information, that the Japanese
people had, they were not ready to accept what happened and expected
more from their team.
I know that to have hopes is only logical but what was forgotten
was than Japan played not only one good team in Brazil, but two
others in Australia and Croatia. The players were not well informed
and didn't think that Australia
and Croatia
were very good.
And again, to compare that team and the team now is difficult. I
didn't set about changing the team for the sake of it, but what
happened after the World Cup was that a lot of the players just
decided to stop playing. And some of the most important ones decided
that was it, they would not be part of another World Cup campaign.
And there was despair in the team. A lot of players wanted out of
the national team, they wanted to let young players take their place.
And I had to convince them that there's life after the World Cup,
that their sporting life wasn't over and that they were still needed.
As for the Asian Cup team, I managed to convince and include players
who were in Germany and that's very important because they have
the experience. Money can't buy everything. You need the experience
that you acquire there. And of course my team is made up of younger
players. Everybody always wants results, results, results. Even
though the official position of the JFA is to qualify for the World
Cup in South Africa, the facts are that everyone wants immediate
results.
What is the level of competition like at the Asian Cup?
The thing is that very often the Asian Cup is compared with other
cups in the world - the European Cup, the Latin American Cup and
to a certain extent the African Cup of Nations. In fact it is quite
different. Asia has one advantage, even though it isn't an advantage
at the moment: It has a lot of room to get better. They can get
so much better that they can actually catch up to the other continents
in the world. We need to look at quality, we need to look at the
differences between teams, we need to look at the importance that
football has to the people in each country, and Asia has the capacity
in football to progress very, very fast. And at the economic level
Asia will continue to get so much better. And the question is when
these countries become more important economically, will they also
become more important in football terms? That will of course depend
on the amount of investment that is put into the game.
I wouldn't be surprised in the next few years if Asia becomes one
of the two most important continents in football.
The most important thing in my job is not to look down at your opponents
but to know your opponents. To know for example that in the Australian
team 19 of the players play in Great Britain or in Europe, and a
lot of them are playing in the Premiership.
My job is to know that in Iran,
in Qatar, in the Emirates, in Saudi Arabia the coaches are very,
very good. And they're there because they want to teach and want
to pass on something and you have to respect the job they're doing
there. We could talk about this for hours, but it basically boils
down to one thing: respect. If you do not respect your opponent
they will not respect you. In soccer we can no longer talk about
good teams as opposed to bad teams, the top teams or the underdogs.
What counts is who's the better team at the time they are playing,
not before the match or after the match.
 |
Ivica Osim |
What do you think of Australia joining the Asian Football
Confederation this year?
I think that it's good for football in general. It's good for
Australia because they are moving to a group that is stronger. It's
good for Asian football because a team is coming with a different
style, full of players that are playing in football countries.
Great Britain is really the top country for football. That gives us
the opportunity to discover new things and learn things. Of course it
also means more competition for the top position, because Australia,
I think, is going to qualify and aim for the top position. And so all
in all it makes everything more interesting.
Do you think Shunsuke Nakamura has found his level at Celtic?
This is a very delicate question. I have to be careful with what
I say.
To be honest, it is quite amazing that Nakamura
actually went to Italy. It is very difficult to play football there.
If it isn't the hardest league in the world, then it is among the
two hardest in the world. And so for Nakamura to do this, he has
to be very, very strong. Same for (Hidetoshi) Nakata.
That means you have to adapt. Italy is a place where tactics are
important. Discipline is important, as well as the athletic side
of it. When a player goes to Italy, he has to learn to become more
disciplined, but this is not really what happened to Nakamura. Maybe
Nakamura was not meant to be that sort of player, one who just follows
what the coach is saying. He has a lot of talent, but he wasn't
listening to the coach enough.
It's quite noteworthy that Nakamura decided to make the switch from
Italy to Scotland. Some people commented that Scotland wasn't the
same level as Italy, but Scotland really is at the top in Europe.
In Scotland there is a great tradition. The coaches are really good,
the fans are knowledgeable and there is a great history there, especially
at Celtic. Nakamura's problem is at the physical and tactical level.
But what happened in Celtic was that the coach was clever enough
or open enough to integrate Nakamura, who is now playing a lot better.
It could also be that he changed with age and with experience, but
for example you can see that Nakamura is running a lot more than
he used to. Well, on Japanese TV you only see the highlights of
him scoring all the time. It's like every player is scoring five
goals a game. It's not really like that, they have other things
to do that are just as important. I personally hope that by integrating
a player of Nakamura's caliber (into the national team), it will
increase the motivation and will be good for us at the Asian Cup.
It's hard to say if this will happen, if we'll benefit from his
inclusion, because it's a team, not just one player. The team has
to accept the style of Nakamura, and be willing to play with him,
or vice versa.
The star system is still very strong in Japan. It can be good for
the image of football but it can also make for difficult situations.
In Japan it's the star above the team. This is going to change,
slowly.
The way I see it, there are two ways to compose the team. You pick
Nakamura and build the team around him, picking the players that
will play best with him and that will bring the support that Nakamura
needs. The other way is to decide on the team and then figure out
how to integrate Nakamura.
As the Asian Cup approaches, now is the moment to choose between
the two. And it is very difficult because Nakamura is a very important
player. With the help of the others he can really bring a lot. It
is a question of figuring out how to take advantage of his positives
while hiding his negatives. And when I say hiding his negatives,
it's not just eliminating them with the help of the rest of the
team but also hiding what Nakamura cannot do from the other teams.
And in the case of Nakamura it is very difficult because he's a
player who has been studied in the past and everybody knows him
very well.
Would you welcome Hidetoshi Nakata back into the fold if he came
out of retirement?
Why did Nakata decide to stop playing? I don't know. I can only
make suppositions.
He is a very intelligent person. The way I see it is that he started
in Italy and played there successfully for a long time. But he
started with the best Italian team, Roma, and then every few years he
moved down to lower teams. Then he went to Great Britain and played
for a good club but understood that there, too, it was going to be
very difficult.
And so he behaved like a true Japanese, with this idea that he had
to stop before going any lower. He had a name to maintain and an
image - he was a star. And that's what he makes a living at now,
being a star. And that's something that he didn't want to lose by
playing too long. Why jeopardize that? He played in the World Cup.
That's the way I see it. His decision was linked to disappointment.
About playing again, well, he is still young. If he started playing
regularly again, either in Japan or for a European team, I'd say
there would still be room for him on the national team. It would
be good for the Japanese team. But of course in Japan you see other
players that are coming up that could take his place, that could
make his comeback unnecessary.
It wouldn't be because of his name he would come back to the national
team it would be because of his qualities.
How long will you keep the door open to him?
The door opens and closes, it changes with time. For the future,
all I can say as the person who decides the makeup of the team is
that I could keep the door open for him.
You mentioned other players who could eventually take over from
Nakata. Who exactly are you talking about?
I am not going to answer that question. If I answered, I would be
starting a war. It would be quite detrimental to the ambience within
the team. I don't want to give weapons to journalists. I don't want
people to write things at a level that isn't really important. What
is important now is to build cohesion within the team. That is what
matters.
Will there ever be another Hide?
I do hope there will be better players than Nakata. If not, then
we can stop playing football altogether. It's not that difficult
to find better payers. Not only for him, this is true of every player.
Take Pele, Maradona, they always hope some other player will come
along and will be better than them. Nowadays it Ronaldo, Ronaldinho.
Well if Ronaldo and Ronaldinho can't be topped, then we must stop,
there is not point in playing football anymore. We always need better
players, including in Japan. So I do hope for Japan that there will
be better players than Nakata. It would be quite sad, otherwise.
There is no ideal player. Nakata was not ideal. He had good points
and other points that were no so good. It's not his fault, but we
need to know these things. I think there will be players that will
be better than Nakata. If Nakata doesn't like what I am saying now,
if he's jealous, or if he thinks he's top and no one can reach him,
well too bad. But there will be better players coming along.
You've criticized your team's preparation for the Asian Cup. Would
you care to elaborate?
It could be a first in any cup competition: One team (i.e. Japan)
enters without specialized preparation. It could be a good
experience, I don't know.
But one thing is for sure. The Japanese payers are tired and their
motivation is down. The other teams have already had 20 days or
more on their own to prepare. That's what happens everywhere else
in the world. It's the fashion in football to go into camp and prepare.
So the Japanese approach is a new approach - we don't prepare. But
it means there's less spending and also the players don't have to
live such a direct life that the others will have to go through
in preparation.
There's also another problem, in that all Asian teams are motivated
when it comes to playing Japan. They want to beat Japan. That is true
for all the Asian teams.
It is not only for football, but for historical and economical
reasons. In Asia it is good if you win against Japan. So that means
that the other teams already have that extra motivation against us.
We need to find an answer to that motivation. We need to motivate
ourselves. If we don't succeed it will show the other teams that they
were right to have that motivation, that they had it for a good reason.
What I fear is that Japanese players will not have the time or the
strength to react and to find that extra motivation they need to
enter the Asian Cup.
Do you think there are too many cup competitions in Japan and
would you suggest scrapping one or more of them, say the Nabisco Cup?
Well, it is not up to me to get rid of the Nabisco Cup. The main
problem is the way it is organized. You have some matches on
Saturdays and cup matches on Sundays and you have some players
playing back to back, two days in a row. Should it be that the
national team members and their teams get the opportunity to play
earlier, like on the Friday?
Getting rid of the Nabisco Cup is not a good idea, it is followed by
many people and the public is quite in favor of it.
The situation is unique to Japan. It's the only place in the world
where you have this type of (scheduling) problem.
Tell us about Japan's physical strengths.
First I have to scan the room to make sure there are no Korean or
Australian spies around. But our opponents already know the answer.
I think the Japanese team has a lot of qualities and one of the top
ones is that it is Japanese in the way it behaves and feels. Trying
to imitate what others do is a mistake and it leads to a loss of
personality.
Now how to solve the problem of playing against teams who are a lot
taller, a lot stronger is quite simple: You don't need to answer that
with players who are 2 meters tall or more. We have players who are
tall enough already and more importantly we have players that are
mobile.
We have to look for players with other qualities. We have to look for
aggressiveness, for players who are permanently on the move on the
field. We have to look for qualities that are not obvious to the
public when they are watching but are obvious to my eyes.
I don't think there is any need to change the team because of that.
We already have some quite athletic players on the team. We have Yuji
Nakazawa, Marcus Tulio Tanaka and Seiichiro Maki. They are tall. We
are not playing basketball for God's sake, we don't need to find
players that are 190 centimeters or taller.
We could look for smaller players, but they must always be moving, be
aggressive and fast. We have to look for different qualities. We have
to look for Japanese qualities. We have to basically "Nipponize" the
team. Before, the tendency was to always imitate. And I think we have
to find a way of having a Japanese team that is made in Japan.
Related Links
Sef
Vergoosen interview
Robert Verbeek
Mid-Season 2007
|
|
