Shinji Okazaki, who has scored 50 goals for the national team, reveals his pride as a professional striker.
Looking at the current members of Japan’s squad for the Asian qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup in North and Central America, Takumi Minamino (29, Monaco) has scored the most goals with 20, while Junya Ito (31, Stade de Reims) and Kisei Ueda (25, Feyenoord) have scored in double figures with 13 and 11 goals, respectively. Takuma Asano (29, Bochum), who seems to have a strong performance on the big stage, has only nine goals. Okazaki’s 50 points is a remarkable achievement.
I myself was a very rare type of player,” he said. I was the type of player who is a striker, but also plays for the team to do well. When I played for the national team, there were talents like Keisuke (Honda), Shinji (Kagawa, Cerezo Osaka), and Uchi (Atsuto Uchida, commentator), and I was not the main player. I had to play on the right or left side for a long time. I had to play on the right or left side for a long time, and if I didn’t do that, I couldn’t survive.
Okazaki once recalled in an interview with the author.
Looking back on his national team career from ’08 to ’19, Okazaki was certainly not always used heavily in the front line. When Takeshi Okada (67, current president of FC Imabari) made his debut for the national team, Keiji Tamada (44, manager of Shohei High School) and Yoshito Okubo (41, commentator) often played up top, so Okazaki was mainly used on the flanks. This was the case in 2009, when he scored 15 goals in the year. When he was up front, he was mainly playing in the top two, and he was far from being a “mainstay of the first lineup.
In the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Honda was chosen to play in the first lineup just before the tournament, and Okazaki was dropped from the starting lineup. Okazaki was forced into the position of being sent off as a joker in the middle of the lineup.
To be honest, I was surprised to see Keisuke in the starting lineup. But he was running in his own way, and he had a competitive spirit. I thought that came out well. As a team, we are getting results, so that’s all that matters.
After the World Cup in South Africa, he was biting back his frustration. That is why he had no choice but to accept the harsh reality that he could not win the trust of his coach.
His use in the front line was limited during the four years leading up to the next World Cup in Brazil in 2002. Alberto Zaccheroni’s regime favored a tall, target-man type up front, with Ryoichi Maeda (42, national coach), Yuya Osako (34, Kobe), and Yoichiro Kakitani (34, Tokushima) all being used. Okazaki was again positioned as a side player.
Okazaki was scoring a lot of goals as Mainz’s absolute leading scorer at the time. Thomas Tuchel (50, now at Bayern), who was in charge of Mainz, asked , “Is Shinji used on the right side for the national team? Who is up top?” Okazaki himself was also surprised. Okazaki himself must have wondered why he was not being used, but the dedicated man never forgot his “for the team” spirit.
