Pre-match speech
This will be a confrontation between two familiar opponents, as U23 Japan aims for the third championship in history, an unprecedented record, while U23 South Korea wants to add more titles after their first coronation in 2020.
Head coach of the U23 Japan team, Go Oiwa, knows that his team must play much better to be able to defeat U23 South Korea, when the defending champion needs a penalty shootout to overcome the challenge from U23 Jordan in the quarterfinals.
He said: "The match against U23 Jordan is very difficult because they are strong, but I have seen the progress of the whole team throughout the tournament and we will definitely perform even better in the next match.
Of course, the opponent will be stronger when we go deeper. U23 Jordan has caused some difficulties that we need to overcome, but defense is not just the job of each defender, we must defend as a team and everyone needs to coordinate better”.
Assistant coach of the Korean national team, Lee Kyung-soo, expects his players to play strongly, after witnessing Jordan perform 10 shots into the U23 Japan goal.
He said: "U23 Japan has not lost any matches in this tournament and they have shown both effective attacking and defensive ability. After analyzing the playing style of U23 Japan, we realized that we should put pressure on them because doing so, we can maximize our strengths, which is attacking ability.
In terms of tactics, we need to have a good plan. We encountered some difficulties when facing U23 Lebanon in the group stage, but through the matches, we were able to put more players in the penalty area and in the quarter-final match against U23 Australia, we got good results thanks to that.
In the match against U23 Japan, we will try to focus on counter-attacking and gain ball control in the higher area of the field so that we can penetrate their defense.
Notable statistics
This is the fourth meeting between U23 Japan and U23 South Korea in the history of the AFC U23 Asian Cup. U23 Japan has won the first two matches, both direct elimination matches (finals in 2016 and quarterfinals in 2022), while U23 South Korea won the most recent match, a group stage match in 2024.
No team accumulated a lower expected goal difference (xGA) than U23 Japan (0.98) and U23 Korea (1.6) in this year's tournament. In addition, these two teams only faced 17 and 26 shots from the opponent respectively. These are also the best stats among the four teams in the quarterfinals.
U23 Japan has the ability to put very good pressure right on the opponent's half, with 21 times regaining ball control in the final area of the field throughout the tournament, behind U23 Jordan and U23 Uzbekistan (each team 22 times).
Shusuke Furuya and Ryunosuke Sato both scored three goals at the tournament, marking the first time Japan has had many players score 3 goals or more in an AFC U23 Asian Cup.
No one performed more accurate passes than the Korean duo Shin Min-ha (290) and Lee Hyun-yong (289) in the tournament. Meanwhile, Hyun-Yong (331) and Min-Ha (313) also ranked first and second respectively among the players who performed the most passes in the tournament.
The U23 Japan vs U23 Korea match will take place at 6:30 PM on January 20.
