NO SHORTCUTS FOR LIONS: OGURA

S'pore coach wants players, coaches to work hard and together to improve

- David Lee

Tsutomu Ogura has been described by his Lions as a “go-getter” and a “coach who communicates his concepts clearly”.

These are attributes the Singapore national football coach developed after he accepted he was not going to be a top footballer who could play at the World Cup and the Olympics for Japan, who were also not powerhouses at the time.

In 1990, he was just 23 when he set out to become a coach and went to great lengths to achieve his dream.

The only child bade farewell to his parents in his home town Osaka to pursue coaching education in Europe as he wanted to see the outside world and felt Germany had renowned coaches at the time. “I think they were crying when I first went to Germany because I was still young.”

During his stint, he played for the Werder Bremen amateur team as a winger and taught sports on the side at a Japanese school.

Ogura himself received an education that would last him for life. Not only did he witness the reunification of Germany in 1990, he learnt English and German, as well as the best coaching practices at a time when the Germans were world champions.

He returned to Japan in 1992 and wound down his playing career as a central midfielder with Furukawa (now known as JEF United) in Chiba, where he settled down after marrying 45-cap Japan international midfielder and Women’s World Cup player Michiko Matsuda, whom he had earlier met at Tenri University.

It is little wonder their four sons inherited the couple’s sporting genes - their three older kids played lower-league football and two of them also went into coaching, while their youngest is a national Under-18 basketball player.

After hanging up his boots, Ogura became an assistant coach with JEF United for 10 years before he was recruited as Japan assistant national coach from 2006 to 2010 when he went to two World Cups with Bosnian Ivica Osim and then Takeshi Okada.