Perryman's local knowledge carries a health warning

When the J-league season restarts in mid-July and the circus has left town, Steve Perryman will begin his seventh year as a coach in Japanese football. About a quarter of his footballing career, he calculates, the best part of which was spent running Tottenham's midfield alongside Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With two young daughters, both fluent in Japanese but due an English education, Perryman's thoughts are turning to home. At the age of 50, this could be his last season in the Far East.

Perryman can bring some much needed perspective to the understandable concerns about heat, humidity and the pace of the pitches already highlighted by several England players. "The ball won't be zipping about as it does in the Premier League," Teddy Sheringham said. "The South Americans, the Japanese, they'll know how to play on that type of grass and we've got to learn quickly how the ball rolls. The surface can be very sticky."

By chance, Perryman's Kashiwa Reysol side tested the relaid Saitama pitch where England open their group campaign next Sunday against Sweden. "They'd had some problems a few months before when Italy played Japan and the game had to be stopped because the players were spending so long replacing the divots," he recalls. "But eight months later when we played on it, it was perfect, a lovely pitch. I used to think Anfield was the quickest pitch we played on in my days, but this was quicker than that, if anything. So I don't think there will be any problems. Ossie [Ardiles] and I spent five years trying to get them to cut the grass at our first club, but we never had much luck. The groundsman seemed to have more authority than the manager.

"Sapporo [the venue for England's second match against Argentina], in the far north, is different. Winters are tough. It is the only place in the country where the houses have central heating. But the climate in summer is generally just like an English summer and they've been growing the pitch outside the stadium to get the sunlight, so I don't think there will be any problems. Where England could find it hard is in the south where it can be bloody humid. I've got used to it now, but when I first arrived I was taking five showers a day. It was awful, I felt tired all the time.

"Those sort of conditions have to favour the Africans and the South Americans. I remember the Confederations' Cup when France beat Japan in the final. There wasn't that much in it, but when Japan played in Paris, it was like men against boys. That's the sort of difference it can make. If you've not quite got your legs, you might be going home early." England's final group match is in Osaka, against Nigeria, in the south of Honshu island.

"The surfaces will vary from ground to ground," says Jeff Perris, director of consultancy services at the Sports Turf Research Institute. "In the north, they should be much the same as the Premier League, but in the south where they use warmer season grasses, like Bermuda grass, which are coarser bladed, the pitches will be more spongy and slower. It will affect the bounce, which will be lower, and sap the energy more. Those will be different from the usual Saturday afternoon pitch in the Premiership. But I hope they have laid down parameters on the height of the grass, the speed of the ball over the surface, the ball bounce, things which can be measured, so that there is some uniformity of performance for the different pitches."

Perryman's own emotions will be torn during the month of the World Cup. Naturally, England will have first call on his affections, but a strong campaign by the co-hosts would provide a welcome new momentum to the football revolution. One World Cup, one goal, no wins and a recent 3-0 defeat by Norway does not encourage optimism. The French coach, Philippe Troussier, outraged popular opinion by leaving out the mercurial playmaker, Shunsuke Nakamura, then departed swiftly for Europe while his deputies had to explain the controversial selection to the press.

"Realistically, if the Japanese can get out of the group [which includes Belgium, Russia and Tunisia] they will be doing exceptionally well," says Perryman. "The Japanese know their league's not the best, but they're starting to get into the flow of international football. They deserve to do well. They listen, they have respect for the coach and they're very open-minded.

"They don't relish the physical side of the game as much as the Koreans, but I just hope they don't panic. If they lose the opening game, the press might go over the top, not like the English tabloids, but just 'you've promised us all this and we've spent so much, so what's happening', that sort of thing. So many teams start the World Cup badly, get stick and then end up winning it, France in 1998, England in 1966, but I'm not sure the Japanese are mentally strong enough to take it. It would just be great if the team had a good World Cup, because football is just beginning to edge baseball for popularity and that would give it a real boost."

Perryman will go to games and do some media work, but training starts again in Nagano in late June, a salutary reminder that not all life ends when the last ball is kicked in Yokohama on 30 June. By then, Perryman could be the last English footballer left on Japanese soil.