Former Yugoslavia coach Ivica Osim has emerged as the likely successor to Brazilian legend Zico at the head of the Japanese national team.
"We have been focusing on one person," Japan Football Association president Saburo Kawabuchi said here amid rumors that he has picked Osim to steer Japan on the road to the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
The Sarajevo-born Osim, 65, who has been managing J-League powerhouse JEF United Chiba for four years, marshaled the former Yugoslavia to the World Cup quarter-finals in 1990 after taking over the national team in 1986.
"We intend to make a final decision this month, or by early July at the latest," Kawabuchi said.
Japan, who failed to make it past the group stages in Germany, are to play their first Asian Cup qualifier against Yemen at home on August 16.
Osim expressed interest in the Japanese job when he was approached by the football association, the Sports Nippon daily reported in Tokyo.
Rumor has been rife about Zico's successor since the 53-year-old veteran of three World Cups as a player vowed to quit Japan after the finals and look for a coaching job in Europe.
Among other likely successor, according to Japanese media, is former French star midfielder Didier Deschamps, who was the France captain when the country lifted the 1998 World Cup at home and won Euro 2000.
Aime Jacquet, the 1998 World Cup winning coach, and another Frenchman Bruno Metsu have also been mentioned.
Metsu, guided Senegal to their first-ever World Cup in 2002 when they beat France and eventually reached the quarter-finals.
The Japanese FA chief said the next Japan coach must follow Zico's policy of giving players the freedom to express themselves on the pitch, in contrast to his predecessor Frenchman Philippe Troussier's emphasis on tactics and rules.
However, Troussier brought Japan to the round of 16, their best ever result since their World Cup finals debut in 1998.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier