Asian teams have pride to play for at the World Cup, but their preparations have been inconsistent, with all of them losing their final warm-up games.
Australia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea are the Asian Football Confederation teams flying the flag, with New Zealand enjoying their first outing at the World Cup since 1982 after qualifying via a playoff.
They are looking to reaffirm the region’s growing stature, but none was handed an easy draw and they have their work cut out.
Japan is struggling with four straight defeats in the run-up to the big tournament.
They are now encamped in their base camp in George on the Western Cape, with coach Takeshi Okada needing to not only lift their game, but their morale, after losses to Ivory Coast, Serbia, South Korea and England.
Nevertheless, Okada insists the former Asian champions are raring to bounce back in their Group E opener against Cameroon on Monday in Johannesburg. They also face the Netherlands and Denmark.
“We could have matched ourselves against weaker opponents, but we needed to play strong teams,” he said of their build-up. “The players may have some fear, but after being pushed into a tight corner, they’d rather fire up.”
The Socceroos also go into the tournament on a defeat, having lost 3-1 to the US on Saturday.
Coach Pim Verbeek, who has already announced he will quit after the tournament, rejected the idea that his team’s confidence had been harmed.
“I’m not concerned. They didn’t create that many chances in the first half and it was only when we were pushing forward that chances seemed to fall to them,” he said. “If this had been a real World Cup game, then we would have approached the game differently.”
Australia were the region’s standout performers at Germany 2006, finally beaten 1-0 in the round-of-16 by eventual champions Italy.
This time Verbeek’s battle-hardened and experienced team is pitted with Ghana and Serbia, with their opening Group D game against three-time champions Germany in Durban on Sunday.
South Korea, in their eighth World Cup finals, made it to the semi-finals in 2002 on home turf, but struggled in Germany four years ago where they failed to get beyond the group stages.
Coach Huh Jung-moo, whose team are in Group B alongside Argentina, Greece and Nigeria, will be relying heavily on Manchester United’s Park Ji-sung and Bolton Wanderer’s Lee Chung-yong.
They too lost their final warm-up game, falling 1-0 to Spain, the tournament favorites, but Huh remains confident his team can go places.
“We go to the World Cup with the determination to succeed,” he said. “We feel we played well against Spain.”
Neighbors North Korea retained their aura of mystery by banning reporters from watching a training session and speaking to players on Monday.
While the other teams have welcomed locals to watch them go through their paces, North Korea’s training has all been behind closed doors and they have yet to give a press conference.
The 2,000-to-1 rank outsiders made their debut on South African soil on Sunday in a 3-1 friendly loss to Nigeria, which garnered more headlines for the trouble off the pitch after 16 people were injured in a stampede by ticketless fans.
Drawn in the same group as Brazil, Ivory Coast and Portugal, they are devoid of big names, with only three of their squad based abroad.
New Zealand round out the Asia-Pacific interest and while they stunned Serbia 1-0 in a friendly earlier this month, they crashed 3-1 to Slovenia last Friday. They are drawn in Group F with Italy, Paraguay and Slovakia.
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