Between 1988 and 1992, Japan set a record in Asia on how a football team can improve and progress in just four years.

In the ninth Asian Cup in Qatar in 1988, Japan finished last for their group after losing all their matches in the first round, the last one against the UAE which ended in a 1-0 loss.

Four years later, they hosted the 10th Asian Cup and won the title. They went on to win three Asian Cup titles from the last five, reach the World Cup finals four times and became one of the top ranked teams in Asia, Australia joined AFC (Asian Football Confederation).

While losing friendly matches might sometimes be better for their technical staff than winning them, because it shows their flaws, losing four successive friendly matches has become an alarming event for the Japanese fans who want to see their "Samurai Blue" in their ever best in the finals in South Africa.

Japanese football has always been a victim of a unique problem, which is using more-than-necessary passes to build up attacking moves. This always gave opponents the chance to reorganise their back line up. But in the last friendly matches, the Japanese have added a new problem, which is scoring own goals.

It was irritating that the own goals were scored by Japan's most experienced defenders, Marcus Tanaka, who scored own goals in both the team's last two matches, against England and Ivory Coast and the team's captainYuji Nakazawa.

Veteran midfielder, Shunsuki Nakamura, who used to play for Celtic before returning home to Yokohama Marinos, is the pillar of the Japanese team. He scored 24 goals from behind the strikers.

Japan has only three players who are playing professional football in Europe: Daisuke Matsui with Grenoble in France, Makoto Hasebe with Wolfsburg in Germany and Keisuke Honda with CSKA Moscow.

Takeshi Okada, who led them in 1998 in France, is once again leading his country in the world's biggest football competition. He is still dreaming of winning his first point in the finals after losing all his matches in France 12 years ago.

Despite losing the last four friendly matches, if Japan fixes their defensive flaws they can go far in the finals in Group E which also features: the Netherlands, Denmark and Cameroon. But they have to concentrate on scoring in their opponent's goal instead of theirown net.