ROUND OF 16: PARAGUAY v JAPAN (Pretoria, 3pm, RTÉ2, BBC1):ASKED LAST week if he thought he had done enough at this World Cup for Everton boss David Moyes to sign him on a permanent basis, Landon Donovan observed, with more than a little edge, the Scot had more than enough opportunities to decide he wanted to work with him beyond last season's loan spell at Goodison Park.
Donovan looked good in the Premier League and better in his four outings here but it seems another player overlooked by the Everton boss is on the verge of establishing himself as one of the stars of the show here in South Africa, with Japan’s Keisuke Honda ready to take another step towards the big time in Pretoria this afternoon.
Already a hero back home, Keisuke has emerged as one of the players of the tournament so far, firing two spectacular goals in the group stages and, even more memorably, setting up the one for Shinji Okazaki that finished off the Danes in game three with a magical piece of close control deep inside a densely-packed area.
Under normal circumstances, his displays here would have the top clubs queuing up for his services but the big British, Spanish and Italian outfits who cast an eye over him when he was with lowly VVV Venlo in the Netherlands all missed the boat. His club were looking for €10 million for a then 23-year-old who can play just about anywhere in the team but there were no concrete takers until CSKA popped up in the January window, battled his employers down to a little over half that sum and whisked the left-sided or central midfielder off to Moscow – where he made an immediate impression by helping them to eliminate Seville from the Champions League.
It wasn’t the first time a club’s lack of faith in Honda blew up in its face. Gamba Osaka originally signed him as a teenager from local club Settsu but decided he wasn’t good enough.
He settled back into playing for his school, an unfashionable outfit in Japanese footballing terms, which he nevertheless helped to the national semi-finals. Along the way he did enough to catch the eye of J-League and Japanese Football Association officials who enrolled him in an elite development squad to put his career back on track.
He joined Nagoya Grampus Eight as part of the deal, became a regular in 2005 and developed into the team’s key player.
Having come that far, Venlo, heading for the second division, looked an odd move in January 2008. The following year, though, he was the driving force behind the promotion-winning campaign, taking on the captaincy despite his youth, scoring 16 goals in a little over twice that many games and settling up a good many more.
His set-pieces and powerful long-range, left-footed drives were the bane of goalkeepers’ lives while his incredible footwork made fools of countless defenders.
Back up, match-winning performance against PSV sealed his reputation amongst his own club’s fans as “Keizer Keisuke”.
There he played at left back, out on the wing or, with increasing regularity, in central midfield.
Here, he has been handed the task of spearheading a Japanese attack whose bluntness was one of many problems dogging coach Takeshi Okada in the build-up to this World Cup.
Okada’s side didn’t manage a single win away from home during qualification and in their warm-up friendlies they scored just once while conceding nine times, prompting many of their supporters to predict humiliation here in South Africa.
Instead, their switch to 4-5-1 and a more counter-attacking style mean they go into this afternoon’s game with every chance of becoming the first Asian side in 10 attempts to beat South American opponents at a World Cup.
Okada looks set to name an unchanged side, while Paraguay, surprise winners of Group F, could make two changes, with Gerardo Martino expected to bring Carlos Bonet in for suspended midfielder Victor Carceres, while Antolin Alcarez could return after missing the draw with New Zealand through injury.
