Match № 22

The match № 22 (second group stage), fourth tournament day

SLOVAKIA – JAPAN 0:2 (0:2)

January 7th, 2015, St. Petersburg, Peterburgsky SCC, 300 spectators

Referees: Petr Miroshnichenko, Dmitriy Ermakov, Aleksey Manin

Slovakia: Jakubech, Hornik, Beniac, Szalay (Mares, 46), Durek, Janco (Mraz, 55), Jirka (Cernak,72), Kopicar (c) (Gorelcik, 83), Vitek (Kolesar, 60), Krc, Vajs (Mihalik, 90)

Head coach: Milan Malatinsky

Japan: Kojima, Fujitani, Nakayama, Syouji, Urata, Miyoshi (Kubota, 67), Ogawa (Kishimoto, 71), Naganuma (Morishima, 87), Sugimori (Kobayashi, 74), Sasaki, Sakai (c)

Head coach: Atsishi Uchiyama

Goals: Miyoshi (19), Ogawa (34)

Yellow cards: Hornik (69), Cernak (90)

Best players: Samuel Durek, Yuta Nakayama

After match comments

Head coach of team Slovakia Milan Malatinsky:

– I congratulate our opponents with the victory. Japanese team has a very good, well-trained players with a high-levelled technique. We also tried to show our best, wanted to play fast football on counter attacks. We had sharp moments but unfortunately couldn't score. Everything that we created in the attacks was nullified by our opponents.

– It seemed your team wasn't ready for counter attacks of team Japan. You had very good defense line during positional attacks of your opponents, but fast rushes made big problems. Two goals were scored in that very way.

– There were some probems in defense. But the main thing we missed classic striker, who would be able to score and impose fight to defenders.

– Is the meeting of teams, repreasenting different football schools – East and West, useful on this stage of tournament when there is no struggle for prizes?

– You are not right speaking about the absence of aims for struggle. Any player who is in national team, I talk about our players who are in Slovakian national team, always put the aim to play well for his country and win! By the way in football as in any other game, there are always emotions and passion and always there is desire to win! As for European and Asian styles, football os Asia is based on the speed, technique and ball possession. In Europe the main things are tactics and organization of the play. That is the reason we couldn't play our football today, we lacked speed.

Head coach of team Japan Atsushi Uchiyama:

– Today we tried to play with high movement. We also tried to keep balance between attack and defense and we have succeeded to my mind.

– There was no hope for prizes already for your team. Was it useful for you to meet the opponent of different football style on this stage of the tournament?

– According to the today's match, national team of Slovakia has a sharp attack tacktics. They were ready to counter attacks, in opposite to Japanese players, being fiddling with a ball, passing across the field, slowing down our attacks. And that difference was so obvious today.

– Your team is playing very selfless. Do you use any martial arts and spiritual practices in trainings?

– No, we don't.

– I've noticed that your reserve goalkeeper was the only on the bench who helped trainers and officials during the match and pauses. Why?

– We are laways ready to help each other. It is Japanese style. His help – is his strong side of a charachter. Japan is a small country – we need to help one anoher to succeed.

– How did you spend your day-off?

– We trained and recovered.