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The story
Former Japan national team forward Keisuke Honda (40) revealed at an event on October 2 that he was ignored by Japan Football Association (JFA) chairman Tsuneyasu Miyamoto when he put himself forward for the Japan national team head coach job. Honda, who continues playing professionally while also serving as head coach of the Cambodia national team — leading them to a best-ever semifinal finish at the Southeast Asian Games — does not hold a coaching license in Japan. Drawing on this experience, Honda argued that the strictness of Japan’s licensing system is dragging down the international competitiveness of Japanese coaches. Opinion in the thread split between criticism of his push to become head coach without getting licensed, comparisons with the track records of current coaches Hajime Moriyasu and Go Oiwa, and debate over Chairman Miyamoto’s own résumé.
Keisuke Honda: “When I put myself forward for Japan national team head coach, Tsune-san ignored me” — tells Chairman Miyamoto that Japanese coaches lack competitiveness
Former Japan national team midfielder Keisuke Honda (40, FC Juron) appeared online at an event held in Tokyo on the 2nd, saying, “I have an intense vision for the path I want to take as a coach.”
While active as a businessman — including investment activities centered on startups — he has also been playing for Singapore top-flight club FC Juron since September.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Coaching on the side like that is disrespectful to the players.
Wait, he's still an active player?
Pointless.
Moriyasu is the winningest coach in Japan national team history, and Oiwa's won back-to-back Asian Cups even with restrictions on who he can call up.
Is that the 'King' effect (a nod to Kazuyoshi "King Kazu" Miura, famous for playing into his 50s)? It's all former national team guys still playing past 40, none of these coaches have international experience.
The license is just a place to study — by that logic, does having a medical license make you a great doctor? What about lawyers?
Okay, so let's just have Honda do it then.
…Yeah, that's not how this works.
Pull that off and people will actually be clamoring for him.
If he can't produce any results with Cambodia, then he just doesn't have much coaching talent.
We're not so short on talent that we need to grant exceptions to an average guy like that.
To be fair, as Cambodia's head coach he did get them to their first-ever semifinal at the SEA Games (Southeast Asian Games).
Whether that counts as a real achievement, who knows.
Who would you want as your coach?
– A proven coach with a track record who looks likely to win
– An unproven coach who might or might not win
Honda's actually a third option:
– A coach who's technically racked up some results in Southeast Asia, where anyone can get hired freelance, but doesn't look like he can win
Right now Hasebe's about the only one who fits the bill.
He has no top-team coaching experience, but he is coaching a reserve team.
What's the point of the coach being the one who stands out, lol.
Flatter a guy like Honda and you're headed straight for a hellish future where he gets even more full of himself.
Soccer's supposed to be a reasonably popular national sport in Japan, and yet there's not even enough money to bring in a top foreign coach.
The JFA is one of the highest-revenue national federations in the world.
It's precisely because they have money that they can regularly schedule matches against powerhouses like Brazil.
The Japan national team coach's salary is world-class too.
The salary is not world-class.
At the last World Cup, Moriyasu's salary was in the bottom tier.
No need to take seriously some guy making excuses about deliberately not getting a license.
Taking Sanfrecce, a club that had never won a title before, to three championships in four years is genuinely impressive.
No matter how much you stretch in sports, reality is all that comes — these guys act mentally tough but are actually pretty fragile.
They were scared of Brazil and could only play scared, defensive soccer — that's the real picture. Wasn't it Tulio (Marcus Tulio Tanaka, the fiery defender) who had to lay into the team at the South Africa World Cup too?
If Tulio hadn't been there, wouldn't the team have fallen apart in disarray? No wait, Okada (the head coach at the time) would've blown a fuse.
It's ironic that at the actual Brazil World Cup, while everyone played scared, Atsuto Uchida — who'd been the most realistic/blunt in his comments — was the one fighting hardest on the pitch.
At the JFA, it's all about connections.
These days it's just a bureaucratic organization, so ability doesn't matter.
His talent for brown-nosing must've been second to none, lol.
Really?
As a player he was captain of the Japan national team, and he's got coaching experience at Gamba too.
And on top of that he's a FIFA Master graduate — seems like about as qualified as it gets.
He probably just hates studying and taking courses, lol.
If he actually won the Belgian league with Sint-Truiden, that alone would be such a huge feat that people would probably push for him as national team coach on that basis.
Getting the UEFA Pro license would be harder than that.
If anything, in Japan he could've just pulled the same trick as Kengo Nakamura or Uchida — getting in purely on national team credentials.
It's ranked 29th.
Out of 48.
Yeah, that's not world-class.
That's not world-class at all.
"World-class" should mean top 5 at least — top 10 at the very minimum.
It's actually the opposite.
There's so little competition among Japanese coaches that Japan isn't producing coaches who can make it internationally — he's saying to loosen the license requirements, grow the talent pool, and raise competitiveness.
The licensing system isn't unique to Japan, though.
There are plenty of teams out there you can coach without a pro license — so go get results there.
If you can't produce results there, you don't even get to step into the ring.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
In Japan, coaching in the J.League or the national team generally requires holding an S-class license, the local equivalent of UEFA’s Pro License. Honda has publicly stated his ambition to become national team coach without holding this qualification, and that’s the single biggest point on which the thread’s opinions split. Head coach Hajime Moriyasu holds the record for most wins by a Japan national team coach, and head coach Go Oiwa has won back-to-back Asian Cups despite restrictions on which players he’s allowed to call up — and in light of both men’s records, some saw Honda’s complaint as little more than sour grapes over his own treatment. Opinions also clashed over the national team coach’s salary, with some calling it “world-class” and others noting it was in the bottom tier at the last World Cup, a point where misunderstandings about the JFA’s financial strength are common. It’s also easy to overlook that the licensing system isn’t unique to Japan, but an internationally shared standard.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] Keisuke Honda: “When I ran for Japan national team head coach, Tsune-san ignored me” — Tells Chairman Tsuneyasu Miyamoto That Japanese Coaches Lack Competitiveness” on 5ch.
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