Bahrain coach Milan Macala believes that Japan will be a strong outfit tonight despite being without some quality players.

Manama's National Stadium will be the venue for the second round of Asian Cup qualifiers in Group A with both sides coming off wins.

"Japan will be a strong opponent even though they are missing a lot of their players who play in Europe," said Macala.

"But even though Japan have to use some less experienced players we do not have an advantage as they have still got (Junichi) Inamoto and (Keisuke) Honda who play in Europe.

"We have three points from our first match and we are looking forward to getting a good result on Wednesday," he added.

"And we also have a different team from that which played in the World Cup qualifiers as we are looking to give our young players a chance to get more experience and such a game as this will surely help them.

"The game will be totally different from the last time we played Japan as that match was during Ramadan and now we have new players and we will try as hard as we can to produce a good performance and get a good result."