Today I'm going back 18 years to 2004 and England's match against Japan which formed part of the FA's Summer Tournament, a round robin competition involving England, Iceland and Japan. England were "on the road" and the game was played at Manchester City's City of Manchester Stadium, more commonly known these days as the Etihad Stadium for sponsorship reasons. The featured game was attended by 38,581 people. The pitch at the Etihad is worth a mention: the groundsman had cut the grass in a series of concentric circles radiating out from the centre spot. All very artistic but not terribly helpful when you're trying to spot an offside.
The featured game was England's 812th ever fixture with England 12th in the FIFA rankings compared to Japan's 25th at the time. The Summer Tournament matches were effectively warm ups for England's Euro 2004 matches with England's first match in that tournament coming just 12 days after today's featured game..
England, managed by Sven-Goran Eriksson, took the lead in the 22nd minute when a shot from distance by Steven Gerrard was inexplicably spilled by Japan's keeper and Michael Owen was first to the rebound. It was Owen's 25th goal for England in 55 appearances and he would go on to make 89 appearances for his country scoring 40 goals. Owen's career as a Liverpool player was about to come to an end as he was transferred to Real Madrid that summer after 297 appearances and 158 goals for the Reds. I have to say that, despite his proficiency in front of goal for England, Owen was never one of my favourite players. I felt that he regarded football as a job rather than a passion and he always seemed to be much more interested in training race horses than being a footballer. That's his right of course and not every player loves the game but I reserve my affection for players that do.
Concerns about England's optimum midfield line-up and indeed their defence were underlined early in the second half when the Japanese picked up on a number of gaps before Feyenoord's Shinji Ono fired past David James in the England goal to equalise. "Oh no!" was surely the tabloid headline the next morning. The English media and public tend to think that England should always be able to sweep aside teams like Japan and, by and large, they do tend to but the gap between European and Asian football seems to be narrowing all the time and teams like Japan are increasingly featuring in the latter stages of World Cup tournaments. The Japanese side against England was largely drawn from Japan's domestic League (the J-League) but, in addition to Shinji Ono they also fielded Fulham's Junichi Inamoto and Shunsuke Nakamura of Italian side Reggina at the time but who joined Celtic the following year. Japan's manager is also noteworthy: Zico, capped 71 times by Brazil (scoring 48 goals) was celebrating his 25th game in charge of the Japanese national team.
England ended up winning the Summer Tournament on goal difference from Japan with both sides beating Iceland but with England beating them 6-1 compared to Japan's narrower 3-2 victory. England opened Euro 2004 with a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory losing 2-1 to France with both of the French goals scored by Zidane in added time. England did qualify from their Group however following victories against Switzerland and Croatia before crashing out on penalties as usual, this time against hosts Portugal at the Quarter-Final stage.
CRB Match No. 1384
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