Japan national team manager Hajime Moriyasu has won back-to-back matches since the World Cup—3-1 over Uruguay and 2-1 over Venezuela—yet he’s only been kept on under an unusual “six-month limited” extension. Sportiva raised the question of why a manager who reportedly won’t be in charge at the next World Cup in four years is still leading the national team, and 5ch reacted. Threads floated the theory that this is just a “stopgap” until the schedules of the Asian Cup and manager Tsuyoshi Oiwa’s younger-generation squad stop overlapping, alongside gripes about lopsided player selection—showing that two wins alone haven’t dispelled the unease over his management.
The backlash against Moriyasu’s “six-month limited” extension is fierce.
And this is despite calling up new faces for their first national team appearances and winning back-to-back matches—3-1 over Uruguay in the first game after the World Cup, followed by a 2-1 win over Venezuela.
Opinions on why the extension is a bad idea vary, but the main one is likely the discomfort of seeing a manager who’s already known not to be in charge at the World Cup four years from now still leading the national team.
Source: sportiva.shueisha.co.jp / Original article here
Saying the 'backlash is fierce'—are you only feeling the wind blowing around yourself?
Moriyasu, acting for his successor's benefit instead of showing off, is honestly admirable.
Sportiva is exhausting to read because every article has some soccer writer with no playing experience spouting armchair theories.
They all seem to have the exact same perspective.
Exactly that.
It's basically a threat that he'll keep pulling strings from behind the scenes whenever he wants (like a retired emperor still running the show).
Win or lose, it'd be better to just let a new manager handle it.
Round of 32, lol lol—extending his contract by a few months over that is pointless.
They can't just skip the national team matches, after all.
In that case they could just look for someone other than Oiwa, but for some reason the association won't budge on that.
Makes you wonder why the guys called up for the 'B team' even bother trying hard.
Toda kept insisting on calling him 'Referee Trossard' during commentary, and the broadcast just didn't get it and ignored him.
That was honestly the most memorable moment of the whole World Cup for me…
Right or wrong aside, you can at least tell what he's trying to do.
He won't be able to easily cut the players who contributed to the title.
He'll probably learn nothing and just start his favorites again, and the team will run out of gas in the tournament.
Handing the best squad ever assembled to someone like Moriyasu.
Even calling it the 'best ever,' it still falls way short of the goals they've set.
If you can't keep surpassing your own best, that means there's no future.
Though with the birth rate about to crash, they might genuinely stop being able to top it.
Letting him go 8 years with zero real targets is unbelievable.
And in all that time, he couldn't even win a major title in Asia.
Who's even considered a great manager in baseball?
Background and Key Points of Debate
Moriyasu has continued in the role he’s held since 2022, now leading the team on an interim basis even after the World Cup. Meanwhile, manager Tsuyoshi Oiwa leads a separate, younger-generation squad apart from the senior national team, and the fact that the Asian Cup’s schedule overlaps with Oiwa’s commitments is believed to be the background behind this “six-month limited” extension. Opinion in the thread split on one point: whether to view this arrangement positively as “a smooth handover to Oiwa,” or to criticize it as “the association putting off deciding on a successor.” Even with two wins on the board, the underlying unease over continuing to employ a manager who is already known not to be in charge at the World Cup four years from now hasn’t been resolved, and the next focal point will be how the transition to Oiwa unfolds depending on the Asian Cup results. Note that comments tied to unverifiable claims about individual players’ personal conduct have been excluded from this article.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Express+) thread “[Soccer] What Did Manager Hajime Moriyasu Get Extended For? The Unease Over His Management Two Wins Can’t Erase.”
