Japan head coach Ha­jime Moriya­su has named a po­tent squad to face T&T in the in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly in Aichi on June 5th. The game will be the first of the 2019 Kirin Chal­lenge Cup which al­so in­volves El Sal­vador.

The squad in­cludes sev­en­teen Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers in­clud­ing Leices­ter city for­ward Shin­ji Okaza­ki and Werder Bre­men front­man Yuya Os­a­ka. Al­so on the ros­ter is Ger­man-based mid­field­er Gen­ki Haraguchi of Han­nover 96, Shin­ji Ka­gawa of Turk­ish club Be­sik­tas, Gaku Shibasa­ki of Spain’s Getafe, Jun­ya Ito of KRC Genk, de­fend­er Naomichi Ue­da of Bel­gium’s Cer­cle Brugge, Yu­to Na­gato­mo of Galatasaray and fel­low de­fend­er Hi­ro­ki Sakai of Olympique Mar­seille as well as goal­keep­er Ei­ji Kawashima of French club RC Stras­bourg.

Moriya­su al­so called up 17-year-old mid­field­er Kubo Take­fusa of FC Tokyo. He be­came the sec­ond youngest play­er ever to be se­lect­ed to the Japan Na­tion­al Team, sec­ond on­ly to Daisuke Ichikawa. Kubo has been a high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed prospect com­ing out from the youth sys­tem of FC Barcelona. More re­cent­ly, he has been play­ing as one of the key play­ers of F.C. Tokyo to pro­pel his side to the league lead with his goal-scor­ing abil­i­ties.

The game will be played at the Toy­ota Sta­di­um in Aichi with a 7:30 pm kick off the start. The hosts then face El Sal­vador four days lat­er in prepa­ra­tions for the 2019 Co­pa Amer­i­ca. Japan will be­gin its 2022 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign in Sep­tem­ber this year.

Moriya­su spoke about the up­com­ing match­es against T&T and El Sal­vador, say­ing that, “They are strong teams who are prepar­ing them­selves for the Gold Cup, so they (T&T) will come out with a strong in­ten­tion to win. Through these two match­es, we will strive to deep­en the strate­gi­cal un­der­stand­ings among the team and pre­pare our­selves ahead of the up­com­ing qual­i­fiers for the World Cup. It is our mis­sion to win through the com­pe­ti­tion in Asia to earn our spot in­to the World Cup. Through each of our ac­tiv­i­ties, we must build our team strengths and strive to win out of the qual­i­fiers,” he added.

T&T head coach Den­nis Lawrence will an­nounce his squad to­mor­row with the team sched­uled to have just a cou­ple more ses­sions on home soil be­fore de­part­ing for Japan via New York on Fri­day.

De­fend­er Car­lyle Mitchell, one of the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the 2015 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup cam­paign, said he ex­pects the up­com­ing match to be a tough but valu­able ex­er­cise for T&T.

“It’s go­ing to be a very tough game for us but it will serve us well head­ing in­to the Gold Cup. We know Japan to be a sol­id and tech­ni­cal­ly sound team. We saw them at the last World Cup. I’ve played in a sim­i­lar league be­fore in South Ko­rea which is their main ri­vals and over there they are ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous and pas­sion­ate about their foot­ball. This will be a great ex­pe­ri­ence for our team but we must go there and be pre­pared to com­pete well and give a strong show­ing,’ Michell told TTFA Me­dia.

“So far our prepa­ra­tions have been good. The guys are com­ing along and we are pac­ing our­selves with the in­ten­tions of get­ting to a sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­el in time for the Gold Cup. These two games against Japan and Cana­da will be a good test for us in time for the Pana­ma open­er on June 18th,” Mitchell added.