Academy Report

The youth team's expedition to Korea reached the quarterfinals of the tournament. Their opponent was the Suwon Samsung U17 team. After breakfast at 8:30 AM, they watched a video of their opponents and held a meeting from 11:00 AM. After the meeting, they relaxed with a walk, but the sun was so strong during the day that they couldn't stop sweating. After lunch, they had another meeting before leaving the hotel. Upon arriving at the ground, they found 12 soccer-tennis-like courts set up on the pitch they had been using for matches, with games already in progress. It's a type of soccer not commonly seen in Japan. The quarterfinal bracket had team names manually pasted on it. With kickoff at 6 PM, the sun was dazzling and it was still hot, so a hydration break was introduced for the first time in this tournament.

It was a crushing defeat with a score of 0-3 in the first half and 0-1 in the second half, for a total of 0-4. The difference in individual abilities was clearly evident in the match. Starting lineup:
GK Matsuzaki DF Shirai, Sato, Yamamoto, Kanazawa MF Takezawa, Asuma, Kawashima, Watanabe FW Ishizu, Yagi
Substitutions: 27th minute of first half Yagi out for Fujieda, halftime Yamamoto out for Shinozuka, 29th minute of second half Ishizu out for Kumada. Kumada moved to right back, Shirai to left back, and Kanazawa, who was at left back, moved to forward.

The opponent came into the match with their best squad for this tournament, and their system was different from what we expected, employing an irregular 4-2-4 positioning.
Their tactics also focused on targeting the space behind the defense and breaking through the center, rather than connecting passes. They exploited the weaknesses of our two center backs, who were unstable in speed and positioning, and we conceded goals early on. We couldn't regain our rhythm, and the score was 0-3 by halftime.

During halftime, we adjusted the vertical positioning of the forwards in defense and the positioning of the defensive midfielders, and we entered the second half.
Although it functioned to some extent, a goal remained elusive, and while we didn't concede any more until late in the game, we couldn't convert our chances into shots and failed to score throughout the match.

In this tournament, we advanced from the group stage in second place with 2 wins and 1 loss, but we were defeated in the first round of the knockout stage (quarterfinals). Unfortunately, we couldn't achieve a good result, but participating in the U17 category and gaining a lot of match experience will hopefully lead to our next step up.