Humility Rules Field in Japan
Up on the big screen in the ice-white Tokyo sports cafe he has named after himself, stylish Japanese midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata is firing the ball just wide of the goal.
Or sending it flying over the crossbar. Or straight into the goalkeeper’s gut.
There are few moments of glory in Nakata’s highlight reel. Regarded as the best player Japan has produced, Nakata scored only one goal this season for Bolton Wanderers in England’s Premier League, exemplifying what many contend is the major weakness of Japanese soccer: no killer instinct around the net.
“Japanese players don’t shoot enough,” says Guido Buchwald, who played for Germany’s 1990 World Cup winners and then for Japan’s Urawa Reds, the professional team he now coaches. Buchwald subscribes to the theory, as do many Japanese soccer fans, that the failure to finish plays is rooted in the clash between a culture that is hostile to extroverts and a sport that demands moments of spontaneous creativity.
“My Japanese players are too often happy even when they shoot it over the bar as long as they have passed and dribbled the ball well in the buildup,” Buchwald says with a frustrated shake of his head.
Defining national soccer teams by cultural stereotypes risks descending into cliches. For all the talk of Brazilian flair and German efficiency, soccer is a cosmopolitan game. The longer Brazilians play with Cameroonians on a Spanish-league team under a Dutch coach, the more the cultural distinctions will be shaved from their game.
But Buchwald argues that sporting habits drilled into young players are still hard to expunge, even at the professional level. And soccer fans here generally accept the assessment by Arsenal Coach Arsene Wenger, who coached in Japan in the 1990s, that Japanese players “are not selfish enough in positions that matter, creating and scoring goals especially.”
Japan produces excellent midfielders, whose cooperation and ball distribution are vital, Wenger told a Japanese sports daily last month. But great goal scorers tend to wait for others to get them the ball and then shoot ruthlessly and often.
These are the chest-thumping egotists who lead the celebrations when they score, pointing to their names on their jerseys or sliding into corner flags on their knees.
Not in our nature, the Japanese say.
“Japanese players seem reluctant to take on the responsibility of being a solo hero on the soccer field,” wrote Yozo Matsuda, a commentator at the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.
Matsuda was making a point about economics, not sports. He cited the national team’s lack of flashy goal scorers to explain why an ethical backlash is emerging against economic policies some fear are turning Japan -- a country that reveres its egalitarianism -- into a more callous society of economic winners and losers.
“It is in our national character to respect equality and feel a sense of relief when we are all the same,” he wrote.
That preference for personal humility can appeal to Western sports fans exasperated by the seemingly bottomless well of self-congratulatory athletes. It’s why New York Yankees left fielder Hideki Matsui’s apology to teammates and fans for breaking his wrist earlier this season was such a welcome surprise to so many Americans.
The Japanese, on the other hand, were surprised that Americans would fuss about the apology. Matsui has always been humble -- even while playing for $55 million over four years -- unlike Ichiro Suzuki, whom other Japanese regarded as self-absorbed.
Suzuki never matched Matsui’s popularity among his countrymen, at least until he switched his persona to the gung-ho team player in Japan’s victory in the World Baseball Classic last March.
And yet, some Japanese wonder, is all that emphasis on equality the best way to produce elite players capable of the individual brilliance Ronaldinho brings to Brazil, or Wayne Rooney to England?
There is muttering about the dreary wins the national team ekes out. Japan has the necessary talent to romp through the Asian qualifying rounds, yet coached by legendary Brazilian midfielder Zico, once a brilliant goal-scorer himself, the road to qualification was built on insipid 1-0 wins against weaklings such as Bahrain and North Korea.
Even Japan’s 2-2 draw against Germany in last week’s World Cup tune-up featured a bunch of bad misses around the goal.
“We moved the ball around quickly today and we could have scored more,” Zico said afterward. “For all the chances we had, we scored just two goals. Obviously, we need to improve our accuracy.”
Then his players went out and beat Malta.
One-zip.
