Twenty years after Philippe Troussier was tasked with molding Japan’s soccer future, Hajime Moriyasu is taking the reins of Asia’s most successful national setup aiming to continue their continental dominance.
Like Troussier before him, Moriyasu has been asked to lead both Japan’s Olympic and senior teams as the nation builds toward the next World Cup, the first time a coach has been asked to double-up since the Frenchman’s departure at the end of the 2002 finals.
However, while Moriyasu sets out along a path comparable to the one followed by Troussier, the similarities between the pair are few.
Troussier arrived in Japan with an endorsement from Arsene Wenger and a reputation forged in African soccer.
Known as the “white witch doctor” during a successful stint in the Ivory Coast, he landed in Tokyo with a reputation for being bombastic and possessing little knowledge of the Japanese game, country or culture.
Moriyasu, by contrast, is an understated, uncontroversial character who has built his entire coaching career on home soil.
However, the task he has been given is similar to that taken on by Troussier: to oversee a generational shift and build toward the next World Cup using the Olympic squad as the foundation for a new period of success for Japanese soccer.
Japan’s run to the knockout phase of the World Cup finals in Russia marked the end of the road for a number of nation’s most illustrious players, with captain Makoto Hasebe and star Keisuke Honda among those calling time on their careers.
That leaves Moriyasu with the task of finding a new blend for the national side along the road to Qatar 2022.
“The passing of the torch will have to happen at some point and ... we need to start bridging the gap between the Olympic team and the age groups below them,” he said. “We have to merge one generation with the next.”
Much of Moriyasu’s initial focus is to be on preparing for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 and he is to lead the national team at this month’s Asian Games in Jakarta before overseeing the senior side’s preparations for the Asian Cup in January next year.
The 49-year-old’s track record as a player and coach suggest that he has the credentials to succeed.
A former midfielder who spent the majority of his club career with Sanfrecce Hiroshima, Moriyasu was part of the Japan squad that won the nation’s first-ever Asian Cup title in 1992.
He in 2012 took over as Sanfrecce head coach and back-to-back league title wins in his first two seasons were followed by a third domestic crown in 2015.
His Hiroshima stint came to an end midway through last year, when — with the club flirting with relegation — he resigned, only to be appointed Japan’s under-23 coach in October last year before also landing the senior role last month.
The situation he finds himself in is similar to that encountered by Troussier, who took Japan to the final of the 1999 Under-20 World Cup, the quarter-finals of the 2000 Olympic Games and won the Asian Cup, before securing a place in the knockout rounds of the World Cup for the first time in the nation’s history in 2002.
Troussier’s tenure helped lay the foundations for sustained success and now Moriyasu is being asked to pull off a similar feat for the next generation of Japanese soccer.
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