Sad-sack JEF United tells manager Kuze to hit the road

Josip Kuze became the latest managerial casualty of the young J.League season on Wednesday when he was sacked by JEF United Chiba after the team went winless in its first 11 matches.

The club said they were in talks with a possible successor to Kuze but won't reveal his name until a contract has been finalized. JEF's next match is at home against Kyoto Sanga on Saturday.

The news ended rampant speculation that Kuze was either going to quit or be fired if JEF lost to Urawa in Round 11 on Tuesday. The Reds won the match 3-0, setting the stage for some odd postmatch exchanges in the bowels of Saitama Stadium.

Not only did Kuze not resign as the Japanese press rumored he would, he declared that the club wanted him to stay and that he was the right man to turn the team around.

"The newspapers always speculate," Kuze said a half an hour after being inexplicably whisked away from a scrum of reporters by JEF's PR flak. "I talked to the club and they say (the rumors are not true), I stay. I want to stay and they want me to stay. We are thinking positively."

But insidious factors were obviously at work behind closed doors at JEF, with everything from the mood of the team to the reasons behind the slump described differently depending on who you spoke to.

"It was the most quiet it's ever been in the locker room after (Tuesday's) game. Nobody had anything to say and everybody stared at the floor. Nobody could look up," said captain Tomi Shimomura, before adding that he had to break up an argument between his teammates following JEF's 3-0 loss to the Yokohama F Marinos in Round 9. "Arguing won't change anything. I think the players know that, but sometimes it's hard after a loss. Most of the players have no confidence. It's our biggest problem. We are trying to find a new way of thinking so we can win or draw, but we haven't found it yet."

In a sign he was either completely out of touch or merely trying to put a positive spin on things, Kuze painted an entirely different picture of the mood at the club.

"The players are happy, the coach is happy, everything is OK," Kuze said. "The atmosphere is not bad. We have a good working atmosphere, we are trying to lift the enthusiasm and make a competitive and winning spirit. Everything is OK--in the locker room, in training--the only bad thing is that we cannot win."

The loss to the Reds was United's seventh in a row, and having picked up only two points from two draws so far this season, the team is in the unenviable position of having a worse record after 11 matches than Yokohama FC had last season. Yokohama FC went on to become the fastest-relegated team in the history of the J.League.

Kuze was said to have signed his contract without the knowledge of a player exodus earlier in the offseason. Big names such as Naotake Hanyu, Hiroki Mizumoto, Satoru Yamagishi and Koki Mizuno all bolted from the club after a disappointing 2007 season, leaving JEF with gaping holes in its lineup that have yet to be filled.

It was always going to be an uphill battle for the 55-year-old former Rwanda national team coach, and Urawa counterpart Gert Engels, for one, was sympathetic.

"I can sympathize. He had to start from zero, he is alone, he doesn't know the language and has no foreign assistant to help him. And he has to rebuild the team," Engels said Tuesday. "They lost so many players, and not only that, they lost the coaching staff and even the president changed."

Kuze's firing follows that of Holger Osieck from the Reds and the resignation of Takashi Sekizuka from Kawasaki Frontale due to medical reasons.(IHT/Asahi: May 8,2008)