The Arena Pantanal promises to play host to a feisty match-up between the hard-working Colombians and the extremely physical Japanese later this evening. Colombia are already through to the last sixteen and so will probably rest a good number of their key players, with Japan manager Alberto Zaccheroni expected to make a decision on whether or not to recall Shinji Kagawa after his exile to the bench against Greece. Yasuhito Endo came on briefly in the opening two games for Japan and actually put in decent, hard-working performances so he will be hoping to get a start this evening. On the Colombian team sheet there are a few little niggles, for example with Mario Yepes who will probably miss this evening’s game due to what the Colombian medical staff have said is a “muscle injury”. Carlos Sanchez may well miss this evenings proceedings too, as he is one yellow away from suspension.
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Colombia won’t make it easy for Japan tonight, who need a win to stand a chance of getting through to the knockout round. That achievement could still be for naught however, should the Ivory Coast turn over Greece in Group C’s other crunch match. Japan have so far been one of the possession teams at the games, however this has gained them little. They lost on the opening day to the Elephants, even though they had roughly fifty five percent possession. In the 0-0 draw against Greece they had the ball for roughly three quarters of the game, a staggering statistic that still resulted in zero dividends. Across both those games, where the ball was mostly at Japanese feet, Japan only registered a measly six shots on target. They mmight be left a little more red faced had Keisuke Honda not scored their one world cup goal so far against Ivory Coast.
The Coffee Boys have shown much more desire, and even though they have had less than fifty percent of the ball in their opening two games, they have scored five times, taking a more “no nonsense” approach. The desire all across the Colombian squad has been very evident, given that those five goals have been managed without some extremely important squad members such as Falcao, Perea , Ramirez and Edwin Valencia. Colombia coach Jose Pekerman will probably look at some pretty severe rotation for this evening’s game, given that he needs to rest his other key men for the knockout stage, with Juan Cuadrado and Yepes likely to miss out.
If the Coffee Boys, who are currently in position to finish the group stages at the top of Group C, win this evening, that will see them take on the runners up of Group D at the Maracana this Saturday, which could either be Uruguay or Italy, neither of which is an incentive to finish in pole position. Should Italy beat Uruguay by more than three goals, and they keep a clean sheet, that could well leave Costa Rica in second place, which would then change Colombian plans again.
