Two nations looking to return to form will do battle today in an international friendly between Japan and Honduras. The match scheduled for 5:35 a.m. ET will be held at Toyota Stadium in Japan and can be live streamed here free. Additional TV coverage can be found on ESPN Deportes.
What They're Saying
Japan forward Keisuke Honda (via Goal): "It's rare that you don't have your coach, but it will be only for a few days and with our coach or not, it won't change that the two games will still be important. I think that we are going to have to brace up in working in our practices."
Honduras manager Hernan Medford (via La Prensa): "The change in head coach in Japan is a little similar with what happened in Honduras. [Javier Aguirre] is a new coach, in addition to a new job and philosophy, but little by little Japan's developed. I've seen them play good games. Others have been more complicated like the one against Brazil, but you have to give them time to improve their football."
"Aguirre is a good trainer," he added. "He's demonstrated it and can go far with Japan, who have grand players."
Tactical Preview
Player to Watch: Japan's Shinji Okazaki has been effective at the club level for Mainz 05. In 10 league appearances, the 28-year-old six goals and an average of one take-on.
Japan's Projected Lineup (4-4-2): Kawashima, Morishige, Sakai, Shiotani, Ota; Shibasaki, Morioka, Taguchi, Tanaka; Okazaki, Kobayashi
Honduras' Projected Lineup (4-4-2): Hernandez; Figueroa, Figueroa, Bernardez, Izaguirre; Garrido, Najar, Garcia, Rodriguez; Quioto, Elis
Note: Credit all statistics to officially licensed data from Opta Sports (via WhoScored).
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