FRANCE 98 – Team Detail

Co-hosts with South Korea for the next World Cup, Japan will make their first ever appearance in the World Cup finals this summer in France.

Japan waited for more than four decades to host the first international football event since English sailors introduced the sport in September 1873, and needed more than a century to reach the World Cup finals.

In 1919, the English Football Association donated a superb silver trophy to the Japanese football association, following the success of the Far East Games in 1917, the first international football tournament held in the country. The trophy was confiscated by the government as arms resources during the World War II and it exists no more. But the trophy forced Japan to hastily form the association in 1921 to formally receive it, and the first football tournament was kicked off in the following year with four university clubs taking part.

Japan enjoyed the first international victory in 1927, and posted their biggest upset victory when they shocked favourite Sweden 3-2 in their first participation in the Olympic Games at Berlin in 1936. The country returned to the Olympic Games in 1956 at Melbourne after a 20-year break caused by the war, and clinched the bronze medal in the 1968 Mexico Olympics — the biggest glory the country has ever enjoyed. The medal is greatly owed to Dettmar Cramer of Germany, who was invited to Japan since 1960 as a technical coach and also helped the national side to reach the last eight in the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

His effort affected many current football leaders, including association president Ken Naganuma, vice president Shunichiro Okano, J-League chairman Saburo Kawabuchi, and former national head coach Shu Kamo, and ignited Japanese football to develop further. Under the first foreign head coach, Marius Johan Ooft of the Netherlands, Japan captured the 1992 Asian Cup for the first time in Hiroshima, preluding the unprecedented success of the first professional league inaugurated in the following year.

But the long-awaited participation in the World Cup finals in 1994 was fritered away at the last second with an equalizer by Iraq in injury time, which snatched the ticket to the United States States and donated it to their archrivals South Korea.

At club level, Furukawa FC (current JEF United Ichihara) became the first Asian club champion in 1986, followed by Yomiuri FC (current Verdy Kawasaki) in 1988, while Nissan Motors (current Yokohama Marinos) and Yokohama Flugels won the Asian Cup Winners Cup in 1992 and 1995, respectively. Thanks to a powerful sponsor programme the J-League has managed to attract some top foreign stars coming near the end of their career such as Basile Boli and Dragan Stoikovic.

But younger players have also been enticed to Japan, such as Leonardo, before returning to Paris St Germain, and Patrick Mboma. Top coaches have also been tempted by Japan. Arsene Wenger, who took Arsenal to the premiership title this season, coached Nagoya when he left Monacco.