Japan were held to a 1-1 draw by the United Arab Emirates in Niigata on Wednesday night in an international warm-up match.Substitute Shinji Kagawa put Japan ahead in the 72nd minute but another player who started on the bench, Ismail Alhammadi, levelled five minutes later.
The hosts were the better side in the first half but UAE goalkeeper Majed Naser did well to keep out efforts by Keiji Tamada and Yoshito Okubo.
The Al Wasl goalkeeper was called into action again two minutes into the second half to stop Shunsuke Nakamura's free-kick from 20 metres but the Japanese should have gone ahead in the 55th minute when Okubo was left unguarded in the area but shot high over the crossbar from a Tamada pass.
Japan coach Takeshi Okada made a number of substitutions on the hour in an attempt to ignite his side and they finally broke the deadlock when Atsuto Uchida collected the rebound after Shinzo Koroki hit the post and fed the ball to Kagawa, who slotted home in the 72nd minute.
The Emirates, who were under the guidance of recently-appointed Dominique Bathenay, lacked cohesion for much of the match but levelled the score shortly afterwards with a fine individual effort by Ahammadi.
The Al Ahli forward broke down the left on the counter-attack and cut inside to beat Japan defender Yuji Nakazawa before firing home the equaliser.
"It is a pity that we couldn't win the game," said Okada. "After 10 minutes, we lost our movement up front. We fixed that in the second half and produced the goal but we couldn't score a second and that's a problem.
"With what we've learned from today's game, we'd like to prepare and beat Uzbekistan next week."
"It was a difficult game for us as Japan took control of the game well. But we produced a goal on a small chance, and that's a part of football," said Bathenay, who took over from compatriot Bruno Metsu after UAE lost a pair of World Cup qualifiers at home last month.
"We couldn't do as much as we wanted but learned a lot from the game," the Frenchman added.
Japan meet Uzbekistan at Saitama next Wednesday while the Emirates will visit Seoul to take on South Korea.
by www.espnstar.com/football/other-football/news
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment