Shinji Kagawa is the best player in a terrific Japan midfield.
Neil W. Blackmon
We continue our 32 Players to Watch at the 2014 FIFA World Cup feature with a look at another massive talent mired in a strange and somewhat disappointing season– player #29, Shinji Kagawa of Japan. Before reading about how the Manchester United midfielder who David Moyes has treated somewhat like a jilted, but not completely unrequited, love this season at Old Trafford, catch up on how these features work by checking out our piece on Player to Watch #30, England goalkeeper Joe Hart. All pieces thus far are available on the front page of TYAC.
Number 29: Shinji Kagawa
Country: Japan
Position: Midfielder
Club: Manchester United
American-Based Professional Sport “Soulmate”: CJ Spiller, RB, Buffalo Bills
Evaluating the ability of Japan to get out of Group C this summer reveals three things. First, if you pay attention to rankings like the FIFA rankings or the ESPN created Soccer Percentage Index, the group is sneaky difficult, featuring three teams ranked among the top 25 in the world. Japan are ranked last in the group in each metric: 47th in the April 2014 FIFA rankings and 36 in the SPI. Second, the draw did the Blue Samurai some favors– pitting them against perennial World Cup/big stage underachiever Ivory Coast in the opener, and offensively challenged Greece in the second match. That could put Japan in decent shape against Colombia, and at no point in the build-up to the tournament in the next six weeks can you mention Colombia without mentioning that they’ll be without world class attacking talent Radamel Falcao. Finally, if the Japanese advance, it will be on the back of a talented midfield, and the most talented player in that midfield is our #29 Player to Watch, Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa.
At the Confederations Cup, Japan’s midfield demonstrated their prowess against both Italy and Mexico, scoring four goals in the two matches, but ultimately lost both games. In both matches, however, we saw a positive sample of what Kagawa brings to the table for Japan in the midfield. Playing behind the strikers, Kagawa is an elite level playmaker with tremendous vision, a cultured left foot, an ability to hit the ambitious pass and a high-level knack for finding space where there doesn’t appear to be any. His swivel and volley goal against the Italians in the Confederations Cup is a great example of the cultured-left foot and the ability to make space where none seems to exist:
The issue with Kagawa, and the fundamental reason he’s not much higher on this list– and corollary, why Japan are almost universally expected not to advance from this World Cup group– is club form. Kagawa was a monster centrally for Borussia Dortmund, playing very high (much like Thomas Muller, in a sense) in a 4-2-3-1 and closing down opposing center-backs when his team wasn’t in possession. Dortmund looked constantly threatening offensively thanks to the little triangles Kagawa helped from with Gotze and Robert Lewandowski, and Kagawa added an extra wrinkle by proving he could find central positions when the team wasn’t holding the most of the ball, giving Dortmund variation in attack (more on this in a moment). So good was Kagawa’s play with Dortmund that Sir Alex Ferguson brought him to Manchester United, presumably to join with Robbie van Persie and give Manchester United a multiplicity of attacking options (and formations) that would make them more difficult to defend than they were with Danny Welbeck playing in front of a withdrawn Wayne Rooney. What has happened since has been an immense exercise in frustration for Kagawa.
David Moyes is out and it’s hard to argue his misuse of Kagawa didn’t contribute.
First, Kagawa has been slotted out to the left too frequently under both Sir Alex Ferguson and his now-sacked manager David Moyes. (It’s worth suggesting that Moyes was sacked for a variety of reasons, and one of those was his failure to find a consistent and effective role for Shinji Kagawa, who is simply too technical a playmaker to misuse repeatedly). Kagawa can function on the left, to be sure, but he’s more of a drifter than a player you’d want to start out there. He’s at his best when he can drift unnoticed into pockets of space on the flanks and then move back centrally and laterally under pressure to instigate plays and attacks. With the exception of one match in the Confederations Cup where he started on the far left, this is precisely what Kagawa was tasked to do for Japan: being in the left of the center midfield, drift wide, then cut laterally to pick up the ball and initiate attacks. It worked effectively- at least on the offensive end of things. The other problem is this: when you play Kagawa too far left– you demand he defend like a winger too– and there’s not any argument that this is the weakest portion of his game. Kagawa is at his best when what he offers defensively is essentially pressure on opposition center backs when his team isn’t in possession of the ball. Tracking too far back isn’t his game.
Under Moyes, Kagawa has been mostly deployed centrally, but often too deep, and he’s been asked to defend far too often. There’s something to be said for the argument that Kagawa is ineffective for United precisely because he’s a defensive liability– but this was not really the case over a much larger sample size at Dortmund and those are the matches that more mirror his role for Japan. Kagawa’s skill is certainly offset the deeper he is asked to go centrally– see Manchester United’s defeat to Bayern Munich, where he was well-behind Welbeck and Rooney– and it can also be offset on the extreme left–like this past Sunday at Everton– where he was overrun in his defensive responsibilities by Seamus Coleman, who is a nice player but not an elite fullback by any stretch. His best spot is slightly advanced, behind a lone striker, in the left of the midfield, which is precisely what he is tasked to do for country. If you keep things simple for Kagawa, he’s brilliant– and his teammates, Keisuke Honda, Ryoichi Maeda and typical lone forward Shinji Okazaki are brilliant at working with him, combining for nearly 20 goals during Japan’s smooth-sailing Asian qualifying campaign. Of these players, Kagawa is the best, and that’s with all deference to Honda, who has played fairly well for AC Milan since making the move in January and was very effective in South Africa for the Blue Samurai.
So, with Kagawa, you get an attacking player that is: highly technical, possesses great vision, can find space when none exists and, despite detractors, has to the chagrin of many been misused since moving to his current club. And you get a player who is absolutely essential to any chance his side have of reaching the next level of the World Cup, whether that is measured as a third appearance in the knock out stage for Japan or a first berth in the quarterfinals. This makes him a perfect soulmate for Buffalo Bills tailback CJ Spiller.
Allowing for creative liberty, because any argument that the difference between the Barclay’s Premier League and the Bundesliga is like the difference between the NFL and college football is a horrendous argument– here are some highlights of CJ Spiller at Clemson University, where he played the “Lightning” role to James Davis’ “Thunder”, and broke record after Clemson record in the process:
A group of images similar to that is likely what Buffalo saw when they drafted CJ Spiller in the 1st Round of the 2010 NFL draft. They hoped to get CJ Spiller the electric playmaker, lightning fast with good hands, strong field vision and a remarkable ability, despite diminutive size, to find space and gaps in a defense where none seemed present. What the Bills have got in return hasn’t necessarily been disappointing: Spiller has tallied over 3,000 yards rushing in four years in Buffalo and also caught 139 passes for over 1,000 yards receiving, giving him the distinction of being one of the only players in the NFL to have such a dual-threat total since 2010. Spiller has added 17 touchdowns to those numbers as well, although he was limited to just two scores in the 2013 campaign, which saw his yards per carry total drop to 4.6, nearly a half yard less a touch than his career 5.1 mark. His drop in production was directly correlated to the Bills poor 6-10 season.
CJ Spiller is an electric playmaker– if used properly.
The question, and it’s one now asked on a national level, is “If that’s what Buffalo wanted when they drafted him, then why haven’t they used him in ways to take the most advantage of his unique skill set?” And it’s a question that predates the 2013 campaign, where the misuse of Spiler continued.
Ricky Gleason at The Buffalo News wrote last August in the NFL preseason that the misuse of Spiller in Buffalo should “make people sick.” There was a point in the 2012 season, Gleason points out, that Spiller averaged over 10 yards a touch: literally, a first down every time he touched the football. Them’s high-school numbers in the NFL– and yet, there Spiller stood, on the sidelines as the Bills stalled out possession after possession down the stretch. Chan Gailey was fired for this sin, and replaced by a new offensive coordinator, Nate Hackett, who entered preseason promising to run Spiller until he “threw up.” Problem is, Hackett didn’t really deliver on his promise. Like Shinji Kagawa, Spiller is adept at creating more space where space is limited. This is mostly due to his quickness and blazing speed, but Spiller’s vision and diminutive frame help. In football, the best way to do this isn’t simply to hand the kid the ball and hope for the best, it’s to find him in a bit of space and see if he can break off more of it. Yes, Spiller can turn the smallest of holes into a big one from time to time, but asking him to do the NFL-dirty-work and grind out the tough yards consistently handicaps his elusiveness on the edge. There’s only so much wear and tear he can take. The answer was always somewhere in-between making Spiller the three-down back (a veritable dinosaur in today’s NFL) and making him the change of pace playmaking back (formerly, third down running back). Until someone in Buffalo finds the happy medium– and it exists, because Clemson’s Chad Morris found it over and over again)– the questions will continue. And so will the struggles of the Buffalo Bills.
Shinji Kagawa and CJ Spiller are both massive talents who, like most players in their respective sports, have some limitations. You can insulate them from those limited problems by deploying them in ways that make it easier for them to succeed, and if you do so, you are handsomely rewarded, like Clemson was and like the Bills were for large parts of 2012 with Spiller, and like Dortmund was with Kagawa. Finding that happy medium, or to borrow a more culturally-rooted Japanese word- “balance”– will be the key to Japan’s 2014 World Cup. And it will be worth watching.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @nwb_usmnt.