The 5.7 in Hiroshima: A Ratings Verdict on Japan's Young Players, and the Gaps Inside It

Walking out of Hiroshima's Edion Peace Wing, the scoreboard said 2-1 to the hosts. Outside the ground, another number was doing the rounds on phone screens — an average rating of 5.7. The evening of 28 September ended up being remembered not for the result but for the marks handed out by a British journalist. Scores stuck between five and six became the centre of the next day's debate, while the 2-1 result sat there almost silent. Fifteen years of watching football have taught me one thing: in an international window, a ratings column is more dangerous than a penalty. A penalty can be overturned by VAR; a rating cannot.

The match was a friendly, the opponent was Venezuela, the venue was Hiroshima's Edion Peace Wing, and the manager was Hajime Moriyasu — Japan's fixed architecture. The unwritten contract of such fixtures is simple: the result matters less than the players on show. Moriyasu did exactly that. Five changes at half-time, an injury substitution inside the opening minutes, and senior debuts for Shunsuke Saito and Shuto Nakano. The oldest man in the line-up was Tsuyoshi Watanabe, which meant the leadership that night sat on the shoulders of an experienced defender rather than on the young players. Koki Kumasaka left the pitch injured inside eight minutes, so part of the experiment was torn up before it could be written down. Daichi Kamada was then a Crystal Palace player; alongside him and the Europe-based core of Ritsu Doan, Ayase Ueda and Zion Suzuki stood the domestic and the young. Japan, an Asian elite side, were facing CONMEBOL opposition, so the benchmark was theoretically sound; in practice we were given none of the data that benchmark requires. A penalty was overturned, and that decision carries more questions than anything else about the fate of a 2-1 win.

What the ratings column is actually saying needs clearing up first. The scores sit between 5.0 and 6.0, averaging roughly 5.7. But the match has no xG, no xGA, no PPDA, no possession, no pass map. The column captures a mood rather than a measurement. A single match's subjective rating is never proof of a player's ability; it is a summary of one evening's memory. And once that memory averages 5.7, it hardens into a verdict — especially for players whose names have no independent data beside them.

Where the ratings stop, the match description begins. Kamada created a decisive chance for Yuki Soma, and Soma shot straight at the goalkeeper. Ryunosuke Sato's final pass lacked accuracy. Keisuke Goto missed the frame. Satoshi Tanaka's good pass reached Goto and still ended off target. Four separate final-ball failures in one match are not coincidence; they are a pattern — Japan's problem sits in the last pass and the last touch, not in courage. That area is the cheapest thing to fix and the easiest thing to hide, because a missed chance shows up in a rating, while a missed decision does not.

Yet Japan's three best moments came from defending. Leo Brian Kokubo's reflex save in first-half stoppage time, Ayumu Seko's clearance off the line, and Watanabe's late covering for Zion Suzuki. Three actions, three players whose names never made a headline of praise. Kokubo was instead withdrawn at half-time. I keep returning to that October night when Manchester City's full-back wandered inside and I wondered whether it was genius or statistical inevitability. Today's goalkeeper argument is the same shape. A goalkeeper's price is set by his feet rather than his hands — and yet this match was saved by the hands. The map said right-back, but his feet kept voting for midfield; that is how football opens a gap between a role and its work, and a ratings column can never catch it.

This is where the ratings' real inequality lives. A 5.5 for Kamada reads as tiredness in a friendly; the same 5.5 for Saito, Nakano or Goto reads as a stamp. The same number is bought and sold at two different prices, because club aura carries market value behind the name. That invisible tax is the heaviest pressure on the young. The Europe-based core gets a second chance; the domestic youngster gets the next window, and even that is uncertain. Kumasaka's eight-minute injury makes the arithmetic crueller — the boy who never got the chance to prove himself also got no rating beside his name.

The overturned penalty cannot be waved away. If this 2-1 win hangs on that late decision, the floor beneath the 'played badly, won anyway' story is soft. When a result dangles on a late overturned penalty, the screen decision deserves scrutiny before the character of young players does. That is not conspiracy, it is reality: a big stadium, a big name and camera pressure, all landing together, change the tempo of a decision.

When the stadium empties, I hear the game. In this match you could hear the footsteps of five half-time substitutions and the scratching of one British pen. On my show I poll listeners before I record — consensus, or heresy. After this match the vote was not easy, because both sides were partly right. The young players really did waste their chances; the ratings column really is not a measurement. Holding two truths at once is hard, and here it is the only honest path.

Now I stand against my own argument. First objection: I cannot judge the quality of the chances. Without xG I do not know whether Goto's miss was a half-chance or a golden one. Second: judging a friendly by output is like judging a play by the size of the rehearsal audience. Moriyasu may have wanted fitness and exposure rather than a result; five half-time changes are evidence of that. Third: Kokubo's half-time exit may be load management rather than a hierarchy statement. Still, one fact stands: four wasted final balls in one match cannot be explained away as a ratings-column error. A corner is not a lottery; a corner is a small parliament of intent — and a final pass is likewise a decision rather than chance, and repetition of decisions is what we call a pattern.

Watch two things in the next international window. One, who stands in goal — Zion Suzuki or Kokubo; that single choice will reveal whether the hierarchy is built on passing feet or saving hands. Two, if Keisuke Goto gets another chance, my prediction is that he scores. At this level, a repeated miss becomes so rare that it stops being a training gap or a mental block and becomes simply a matter of time. And if the final pass keeps going missing across the next two matches, the question stops being about players and becomes structural. Then the ratings column should be closed and the data sheet opened, because ratings decide an evening, while the truth shows up in the next window.