Japan head coach Vahid Halilhodzic admitted that his side is not yet prepared for the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup following their 1-1 draw against Mali on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The friendly in Liege, Belgium seemed destined to end in a victory for the African side after the Samurai Blue could muster no response to Abdoulay Diaby’s 43rd-minute penalty kick.<\/p>\n
But a late Shoya Nakajima goal salvaged a result, if not the confidence of the tactician who took Algeria to the Round of 16 four years ago in Brazil.<\/p>\n
“It was a difficult result,” Halilhodzic told\u00a0TV Asahi<\/em> after the match. “We learned a lot, but not all of it was positive. We still have a lot of training to do.”<\/p>\n Japan’s lack of finishing against the FIFA 67th-ranked side hinted at a difficult encounter against Senegal on June 24 in Yekaterinburg.<\/p>\n “We’re not yet prepared to face Senegal,” Halilhodzic admitted before departing for the locker room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Japan head coach Vahid Halilhodzic admitted that his side is not yet prepared for the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup following their 1-1 draw against Mali on Friday afternoon. The friendly in Liege, Belgium seemed destined to end in a victory for the African side after the Samurai Blue could muster no response to Abdoulay Diaby’s 43rd-minute penalty kick. But a late Shoya Nakajima goal salvaged a result, if not the confidence of the tactician who took Algeria to the Round of 16 four years ago in Brazil. “It was a difficult result,” Halilhodzic told\u00a0TV Asahi after the match. “We learned a lot, but not all of it was positive. … Continue reading “Halilhodzic: Japan not ready for Senegal”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":11796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[57,550,551],"class_list":["post-11794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","tag-japan","tag-japan-national-team","tag-vahid-halilhodzic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}