2023 AFC U20 Asian Cup (Patreon)

The 2023 U20 Asian Cup is taking place from 1st March, with Japan taking part.

Theres a couple of players that will be taking part and have now joined the national training camp.

The full squad can be found below:

The main players who either start/or play for their respective J1 teams are:

• Shinya Nakano (Sagan Tosu)
• Hayato Tanaka (Kashiwa Reysol)
• Kuryu Matsuki (FC Tokyo)
• Sota Kitano (Cerezo Osaka)

This in particular will give Shuto Abe more game time at FC Tokyo. 

At Sagan Tosu, with Nakano missing its likely we will see Iwasaki switch sides and players such as Tashiro get more gametime.

Sota Kitano is generally more of a squad player so depending on his fitness we will see Uejo get more mins

Format

The group games will take place until 9th March. If Japan qualify, the knock out stages and Final go on until 18th March.

This means at a minimum these players will miss 3 games and if Japan get all the way to the final this will be 4 games.

There is also the dreaded international break between March 19th - 31st March (GW356 - GW358) where not many club games will take place including the J1 League.

We will have European 2024 qualifiers taking place & I will do a separate post looking at potential players for then/strategy to use