NEWS:Group A team news
NEWS:Group B team news
NEWS:Group C team news
NEWS:Group D team news
NEWS:Group F team news
NEWS:Group G team news
NEWS:Group H team news
JAPAN
Japan midfielder Junichi Inamoto has been booked in for oxygen chamber sessions after limping out of a J-League game at the weekend with a muscle tear.
Desperate to play at the World Cup, midfielder Mitsuo Ogasawara, who has been at loggerheads with Japan coach Takeshi Okada, offered to pay for his own airfare to South Africa.
There was a return after a broken jaw for midfielder Kengo Nakamura while striker Yoshito Okubo donned a Batman-style mask to play at the weekend after shattering his nose.
Former JFA chief Saburo Kawabuchi called the national side boring and blamed them for failing to set pulses racing among Japan fans.
NETHERLANDS
SV Hamburg striker Ruud van Nistelrooy is set to make his comeback in the Dutch squad, but he only intends rejoining if he is a serious contender for a starting place in South Africa.
While coach Bert van Marwijk worries about the fitness of his players increased this weekend, with John Heitinga and Rafael van der Vaart out for weeks respectively with an ankle and hamstring injury, Van Nistelrooy announced that he is fit and healthy.
"Based on my achievements it proves that I am fit and healthy this moment and already for a longer period" Van Nistelrooy was quoted as saying in Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf.
"I have had contact with the coach and he is following me, that is good to know, but I need to be of additional value if I join the squad at the World Cup. When that is not the case, I won't go."
DENMARK
Denmark's first-choice goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen is confident of making it to the World Cup despite suffering an elbow injury when his Stoke team went down 7-0 to Chelsea in the English Premier League on Sunday.
"I believe absolutely that I will be able to make it," he told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, basing his optimism on the fact that the elbow is not fractured.
"It's hanging on a thin thread but I will do everything to become fit," Sorensen told Danish sports website sporten.dk.
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