FRANCE 98 – General Media News Template
Kazuyoshi “Kazu” Miura, a national soccer icon, fought off tears Friday as he vowed to keep playing despite his shock exclusion from the Japanese squad for the World Cup finals. “I did not expect I would return home this way,” Miura told a press conference at Tokyo-Narita airport after failing to make the final 22 for Japan’s debut at the World Cup finals.
Miura said: “I have played with pride as Japan’s representative. How do I feel … I cannot just take it on the chin.” Miura was the biggest home star of the launch Japan’s professional soccer league in 1993 and the ending of his international career enraged his fans who deluged the Japan Football Association with protests.
The association asked police to watch out for possible attacks on the home of national coach Takeshi Okada near Tokyo after it received 100 fax messages and 2,000 telephone calls protesting Okada’s move. “Most of the protest letters said they are ‘disappointed with coach Okada’ or ‘He hurt the pride of Kazu, who has propped up Japan’s soccer’,” an association spokeswoman said. But several messages supported Okada.
Miura vowed to continue his football career. “I have many things left undone in my soccer life, and I want to make fresh efforts for the future,” said the 31-year-old soccer hero, who was left out because his speed and form have dipped in recent months. “I have nothing special to say” to Okada, he said, looking away from cameras.
Miura fought back tears as Motoki Morishita, president of his Verdy Kawasaki team, interrupted the news conference to condemn Japanese coach Okada.
Morishita said the coach and the football association were “extremely impolite” and should have decided the final 22 before leaving Japan. The action showed no respect for the feelings of candidates, he said, adding that “players are not objects.”
Okada announced Tuesday that neither Miura nor 29-year-old midfielder Tsuyoshi Kitazawa were in the final 22. The squad was to move Friday from a base in Switzerland to the French city of Aix-les-Bains. Okada also left out defender Daisuke Ichikawa, one of two teenagers in the provisional 25-member squad.
Miura and Kitazawa were immediately sent home by Okada, fearing their distraught reaction would upset the rest of the squad. Miura stayed in Milan before flying to Japan where he appeared in the news conference dressed in an Italian-fashioned black jacket and a checked cap covering his dyed-blond hair. Kitazawa said he felt “regret” about Okada’s decision but added: “It is not the end of the world. I want to move forward.” Miura said he still wanted the squad to succeed. “Kitazawa and I left our souls there as Japan’s representatives, and I want them to win in the initial league.”
Japan are in Group H with Argentina, Croatia and Jamaica. Thirty-five thousand Japanese fans are flying to France to support the national team, more than double the number for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, according to the Japan Travel Bureau.