Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Manama: Atsushi Uchiyama is looking to make history as he leads his team into the final of the AFC U-19 Championship Bahrain 2016 on Sunday, when Japan take on Saudi Arabia at the Bahrain National Stadium.
The Japanese have never won the title despite appearing in six previous finals, with the country’s most recent loss coming to DPR Korea in a penalty shootout in 2006.
“This is our seventh time going to the final, but we have never won the title so we would like to do well and go back to Japan with the trophy tomorrow,” said Uchiyama, whose team cruised into the deciding game with a comfortable 3-0 win over Vietnam in the semi-finals on Thursday.
Japan first qualified for the final as far back as 1973 before embarking on a run of five finals in seven tournaments throughout the 1990s and 2000s, only to lose them all.
But Uchiyama is confident his team will go into the meeting with the Saudis in confident mood having booked their place at next year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup.
“Now that we have achieved qualification for the FIFA U-20 World Cup, I’m really happy that the players will experience the World Cup,” he said. “Now I just want the players to enjoy the final and have fun.
“There will be a lot of pressure, but I want them to have fun against a good team. After the FIFA U-20 World Cup there’s the Tokyo Olympics and they can move up to the senior national team, so this will be good experience for them tomorrow to play through the tough circumstances of a final. It will be good for them for the future.”
Uchiyama will have a full squad to select from after making wholesale changes for the win against the Vietnamese, with 10 players replaced following the quarter-final win over Tajikistan which sealed the country’s berth at the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
“There was a lot of pressure and stress for the players and by qualifying for the World Cup we relieved that pressure,” he said. “I chose all 23 players to play to win and to qualify for the World Cup and now we have achieved our main target.
“We changed 10 players for the semi-final and it will have a good impact on the players to rest for one game. I don’t think the players are experienced in tournaments, so I’m not sure who will start tomorrow, but our players are all ready to play.
"Of course it’s going to not be easy. We have lost six times in the final and it will be a hard game for us. The pressure is a factor but there’s always a first time for everything and we hope it will be tomorrow and that we can make history.
“Saudi Arabia have a good attack and they have been scoring a lot of goals, but we just want to play the way we have been playing, the same football. It’s not baseball, so we can’t score two goals at a time. We score one at a time and we will try to play our own game.”
Photo: AFC