TOKYO: Asian champions Japan will face Brazil in a friendly in Singapore on October 14, in a high-profile test for new coach Javier Aguirre, the Japan Football Association (JFA) said yesterday.
The 55-year-old Mexican, set to arrive in Japan this weekend, has a potentially tricky start with home friendlies against Uruguay on September 5 and Venezuela on September 9.
Japan, whose World Cup flop led to the resignation of Italian coach Alberto Zaccheroni, will also play Jamaica in Niigata on October 10 before flying out to face Brazil, who they have yet to beat in 10 previous meetings.
Aguirre, poised to become Japan’s highest-paid coach ever with an estimated annual salary of almost $2.5m, led Mexico to the last 16 of the 2002 and 2010 World Cups.
The former Espanyol manager recently told Spanish daily Marca he had been unimpressed with Japan’s performance in Brazil, where they picked up just one point in three games, calling for “a more competitive edge and Latin cunning”.
Meanwhile, Bert van Marwijk, who led the Netherlands to the 2010 World Cup final, is interested in taking over as coach of South Korea’s national team and negotiations are set to conclude next week, the head of the KFA’s technical committee said yesterday.
Lee Yong-soo told reporters in Seoul he had flown to the Netherlands earlier this week and held a meeting with Van Marwijk, who has also managed Dutch side Feyenoord and German teams Borussia Dortmund and Hamburg SV.
Hong Myung-bo resigned as coach in July after South Korea’s woeful World Cup campaign in Brazil, where they earned only one point and finished bottom of their group.
“I met with coach Van Marwijk and heard from him that he is interested in South Korea’s football team,” said Lee, who also headed the committee in 2002 when Guus Hiddink coached the Koreans to fourth place at the World Cup on home soil.
“We talked for an hour and 50 minutes .... There was no concrete result but we’ve confirmed his interest.”
AGENCIES
