The Japan Football Association (JFA) has defended coach Vahid Halilhodzic for the unconvincing performance of the national team at the 2018 World Cup qualification.<\/p>\n
Quoted by Japan Times<\/a>, technical director Akira Nishino said the Japan football governing body fully supported Halilhodzic. However, he refused to discuss speculation on the coaching situation beyond the Australia game.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the talk right now is positive. We don\u2019t discuss speculations or ifs and buts, and the issue was not raised today,\u201d Nishino said after a meeting of the JFA technical committee.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just want to get it done at home against Australia and that\u2019s it. We haven\u2019t performed well against Australia in the past. It\u2019s going to be a massive game, at home, and we want to decide it. That is our sole focus.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe \u2014 from the president to me to the technical committee \u2014 have always maintained that we will be fully behind this team during the World Cup qualifying, and that hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Japan, who are the table toppers of Group B in Asia\u2019s qualifying tournament, are looking for a win against Australia at Saitama Stadium on August 31,<\/a> to seal their place at the World Cup finals in Russia.<\/p>\n However, defeats against Australia and Saudi Arabia, who they meet on 5 September, would leave the team facing playoffs to progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Japan Football Association (JFA) has defended coach Vahid Halilhodzic for the unconvincing performance of the national team at the 2018 World Cup qualification. Quoted by Japan Times, technical director Akira Nishino said the Japan football governing body fully supported Halilhodzic. However, he refused to discuss speculation on the coaching situation beyond the Australia game. \u201cAll the talk right now is positive. We don\u2019t discuss speculations or ifs and buts, and the issue was not raised today,\u201d Nishino said after a meeting of the JFA technical committee. \u201cWe just want to get it done at home against Australia and that\u2019s it. We haven\u2019t performed well against Australia in the past. … Continue reading “Japan FA “fully supported” head coach Vahid Halilhodzic ahead of crucial World Cup qualifiers”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":6376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[761,57,551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375"}],"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=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}