Lixil’s Mori named national team coach again

Lixil Deers head coach Kiyoyuki Mori will lead the Japan national team at the 5th IFAF World Championship in the United States this summer, the Japan American Football Association has announced.

Mori, who was also at the helm at the last World Championship in 2011, will lead a staff of seven coaches, including Lixil’s Hajime Tominaga as offensive coordinator and Obic Seagulls head coach Makoto Ohashi as defensive coordinator.

The other offensive coaches are Hayato Arima of the Asahi Beer Silver Star, Shoei Hasegawa of the Nihon University Phoenix and the IBM BigBlue’s Fumitaka Masahara, while the Fujitsu Frontiers’ Norikazu Nobunara and the Panasonic Impulse’s Masayoshi Yamanaka will help out on defense.

A provisional roster of about 75 players will be announced April 1. After team practices over the weekends of May 23-24 and May 30-31, the roster will be trimmed to about 50 on June 3. The team will practice on weekends throughout June, and play an exhibition game  on June 14 at Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki against a combined team of players from Keio University and foreign players from the X-League.

The final roster of 45 players is scheduled to be announced July 1.

The World Championship will be held July 9 to 18, with all games at 23,375-seat Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, where the Pro Football Hall of Fame is located.

This year’s tournament will follow a slightly different format from previous ones. The top four seeded teams — United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico — have been placed together in Group A. Group B consists of France, Australia, South Korea and Brazil.

In the preliminary round, the teams will play two games against other teams in their respective groups on July 9 and July 12. A team that loses both games in Group A will become the No. 1 team (No. 5 overall) in Group B, while the team that wins both games in Group B will become the No. 4 team in Group A.

The semifinals on July 15 will pit the No. 1 and No. 4 teams and the No. 2 and No. 3 teams based on the preliminary round results.  The final will be held on July 18, along with the playoffs to determine final rankings.

The first World Championship (then called the World Cup) was held in Palermo, Italy,  in 1999. The United States did not participate, and Japan defeated Sweden in the final. Four years later in Stuttgart, Germany — again without the U.S. — Japan won its second straight title with a victory over Mexico.

The United States, fielding a team of collegians, made its first appearance in the 2007 tournament played in Kawasaki, and defeated host Japan in the final. In 2011 in Austria, the United States repeated as champion by beating Canada in the final. Japan finished in third place.

— Ken Marantz for the X-League