England v Japan (International Friendly): odds and bets 31.03.2026

I’m far more interested in this match than I usually am in a friendly. It’s being played on Tuesday 31 March at Wembley and, although there are no points or qualification at stake, there’s certainly plenty of competitive intrigue behind it.

England are coming off a draw with Uruguay in their previous friendly and arrive with a squad severely depleted by injuries and players leaving the camp. Japan, on the other hand, arrive in better form after a 1-0 win over Scotland in Glasgow.

England have more raw talent and greater depth, yes, but they arrive with so many absences that they lose some of their natural dominance. Japan, for their part, tend to perform well when the match demands discipline, high intensity without the ball and speed to exploit spaces. I reckon this will be a tougher contest for the English than many expect.

England

The first thing that really affects England is the list of absentees. Ahead of this friendly, as many as eight players left the squad: Aaron Ramsdale, Fikayo Tomori, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, John Stones, Adam Wharton, Noni Madueke, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka. Some of these absences are due to pre-existing niggles, whilst others stem from issues that arose during or after the draw against Uruguay. In a normal friendly, that would already be significant; for a squad finalising its World Cup squad, it is even more so.

And that previous draw also left some questionable signs. England lacked cohesion and several positions raised doubts, which is logical when bringing together a large squad during the evaluation phase, but hardly reassuring if the team also loses key players just days before the next test. Tuchel prepared for this international break with a very extensive preliminary squad precisely to assess alternatives before finalising the World Cup squad, so we will now likely see a less stable, more experimental England side with quite a few changes from what was anticipated.

Even so, I don’t see this as a weak side, far from it. They’re still playing at Wembley, they still have elite players, and the sheer physical and technical strength of the English squad gives them potential superiority. The problem, in my view, lies elsewhere: without players like Rice or Saka, and with Stones out, England lose a lot in terms of build-up play, competitive tempo and the ability to create an imbalance. They can win on quality, of course, but I struggle to see them dominating clearly for a full 90 minutes.

Japan

Japan are in a very different position. Their last friendly ended in a 1-0 win against Scotland in Glasgow, with Junya Ito coming off the bench to settle the match in the closing stages. It wasn’t a spectacular scoreline, but it was a result that fits very well with what this team is usually like: organised, hard-working and very capable of sustaining tight matches until they find their moment. I really like Japan in precisely these scenarios, when they don’t need to carry the full weight of the match and can operate with tactical discipline.

Furthermore, this fixture forms part of their World Cup preparations, with Moriyasu at the helm and Wataru Endo as captain. In other words, they are not travelling to London just to go through the motions, but to test themselves against a top-tier side in a context that is very useful for fine-tuning their automatic responses. For Japan, these kinds of friendlies tend to be quite valuable competitively because they allow them to exploit one of their greatest strengths: the ability to stay in the game almost all the time.

What I see in Japan is a very clear threat if England aren’t precise on the ball: they win the ball back, run well, regroup quickly and don’t usually give away too many silly possessions. Obviously, England’s individual quality is superior, and that counts for something. But in a match where the favourites are so weakened in terms of personnel and rhythm, it seems to me that Japan have a real chance of making life difficult for them. I don’t see them as mere cannon fodder by any stretch of the imagination.