Two Changes in Moriyasu's Third Term: Nakamura's Set-Piece School and the Four-Back Shift

A night in Nha Trang, the waves breaking against the rocks behind my house, and I sat alone before a screen, rewinding a clip of a free kick. Not to watch the ball curl into the top corner, but to hear the crowd hold its breath and then erupt — the moment when tens of thousands of people lift a single breath together. Years ago, Shunsuke Nakamura stood over that ball, and I remember sitting silent in a small studio in Nha Trang, afraid to commentate, letting the whistle and the roar tell the story on their own. Now that name returns — but standing on the touchline, in a coach's shirt, in a new role: the man in charge of Japan's set pieces.

Moriyasu enters his third term. Instead of announcing a revolution, he chose softer words: change within continuity. A 31-man squad was named, 20 of them retained from the North America World Cup, 11 new or returning call-ups. A solid core, an outer ring under trial. But what I want to linger on is the two changes introduced at once: the adoption of a four-back system, and the reshuffle of coaching roles — Saito giving way to Hasebe in defence, Maeda giving way to Nakamura on dead balls.

Across the coming four matches — Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, then Panama or New Zealand — Moriyasu has a test window of calibrated difficulty. Uruguay is the elite test. Venezuela and Panama are lighter. Ecuador is a formidable South American side. The structure looks like a laddered examination: safe enough to dare, harsh enough to expose limits.

What catches my attention is not the two changes themselves, but the asymmetry between them. The shift to a four-back is a structural change — it touches every phase, from build-up to transition to pressing. The coaching swap is a functional change — it only affects specific game states. The original article places the two side by side as parallel changes, but by tactical weight, the formation flexibility is the heavier one.

How Moriyasu introduced the four-back is also worth noting. He did not speak of a new base system, but of a situational option. In modern football, switching between three and four at the back has become standard for elite national teams — no longer innovation, but an expansion of options. That fits the spirit of continuity: the back-three remains the anchor, the back-four is the in-game lever.

But I want to talk more about Nakamura, because that is the part easiest to romanticise. Turning a free-kick master into a dedicated set-piece coach is a deliberate attempt: to turn Japan's traditional weakness — breaking down a packed defence — into a weapon. In Asian Cup knockout rounds, where opponents sit deep and the margin for error is smallest, a converted free kick can be the difference between advancing and going home.

Nakamura is a free-kick master. That truth needs no debate. But between taking a good free kick and designing good set pieces lies a gap. An individual free kick is a matter of technique and instinct. Set-piece design is a matter of system: routine-building, blocking schemes, delivery variation, and opponent scouting. The original article treats the two as equivalent. I am not sure that fully holds.

One more thing nags at me. A four-back demands full-back and wide-forward profiles different from a back-three. A back-three relies on high-motor wing-backs. A four-back shifts that demand onto full-backs and wingers. Moriyasu's selection logic of positional balance implies some players are being asked to carry two role profiles at once — a hidden versatility tax whose cost only surfaces when the calendar thickens.

And there is a small detail I want to keep, like a grain of sand in a coat pocket. That Go Oiwa's U-21 side — the generation aimed at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics — plays a 4-3-3 is no coincidence. It may signal a stylistic handover path: the senior four-back option could be a bridge toward the successor's system. Japan is not just changing tactics; they are drawing a route.

Looking at the continental picture, Japan still sits at the top of Asian football's hierarchy, with the goal of reaching the summit of Asia stated openly this cycle. Their advantage lies in the depth of their Europe-based pool, not in a single star. The 20-retained, 11-tested split reflects a philosophy: protect the base, test the periphery. On a continent where Gulf federations can outspend on infrastructure, and sides like South Korea or Iran lean on a few elite legionnaires, spread-out depth is an advantage hard to copy.

The four-back, seen from this angle, is an answer to a diverse opponent pool. In Asia, Japan often faces low-block sides — needing width, needing a four-back. But they also face top-tier sides — needing the solidity of a back-three. A dual system serves both.

But here is where I want to turn another way. The word "continuity" is a double-edged sword. It stabilises the project — keeping 20 World Cup members, keeping a core that has been through many major tournaments. But it also means there is no room for the excuse of a "transition season". An experienced squad means results are expected at once. The pressure on Moriyasu is medium, but its source is very specific: if the new weapons do not work, the criticism will target the very phrase "continuity as stagnation".

There is another hidden pressure. When the federation markets the dream of World Cup victory and recruits commercial partners on that ambition narrative, it is monetising expectation rather than results. That is normal federation practice. But once sponsors are recruited against a promise, on-field failure compounds commercial risk. The commercial story only holds if the sporting project delivers.

People remember the goals, but I remember the moment two enemies embraced after the final whistle. With Japan right now, what is memorable is not a beautiful free kick, but how a football nation dares to change the details while keeping the soul. The stadium may be full, but in my small studio in Nha Trang, I still hear a million hearts breathing through the screen — Japanese fans, Vietnamese fans, all waiting to see whether these two changes are truly weapons, or just new names for old things.

I have followed many small teams rebuilding themselves out of the abyss. Denmark did not need the trophy — they taught all of Europe how to stand up again. Japan is different. They are not rising from an abyss; they stand at the summit, asking how not to slip. That is a reverse pressure, far harder, because there is no tragedy to justify the change.

The coming four matches will be the first test window. Uruguay will show whether the four-back can hold against an elite opponent. Venezuela and Panama will show whether it breaks low blocks more effectively. Ecuador will test the ability to switch between two systems within one match. And the free kicks — if Nakamura truly turns them into a weapon — will be what fans remember longest.

Thirty-one names, two changes, one third term. I do not know whether Moriyasu will reach the summit of Asia. But I know one thing, after all these years beside the mic watching the ball roll: the biggest changes are usually not in the formation, but in whether a football nation dares to believe that collective intelligence can be built, one session at a time, one role at a time.

Forty-four years chasing the ball, and in the end I realised I was running toward people. And in Tokyo, thousands of kilometres from Nha Trang, there are people quietly running the same way — only they run on a training pitch, counting every pass, so that one day all of Asia will have to hold its breath.