FRANCE 98 – Japan-Croatia – T. Okada: “Having played a good match is no comfort to me”

“Having played a good match is no comfort to me. We wanted to qualify and that was our only objective. We had to combat the individual quality of the Croatian players by concentrating on our collective game. Our strategy was to mark each Croatian player with two Japanese players. Unfortunately, this didn’t enable us to win this match. Our chances of qualifying are now low, but whatever happens, Japanese football will live on, particularly because we’re hosting the 2002 World Cup.”