Japan have secured their place in the knockout stage of the FIFA U20 World Cup in Poland, progressing from Group B in second place.<\/p>\n
The Samurai Blues were joined in the group stage by Italy, Ecuador and Mexico, after being placed in Pot 4 for the draw. However, the East Asian giants outdid expectations by securing their place in the knockout stage alongside Italy.<\/p>\n
Their campaign began with a 1-1 draw against Ecuador, as the side were forced to battle from behind after an unfortunate own goal from a set-piece. Japan were kept in the game by a brilliant penalty save from goalkeeper Tomoya Wakahara, and eventually found the equalizer courtesy of Kota Yamada.<\/p>\n
The side then picked up their first win of the competition, registering an impressive 3-0 victory over Mexico to put themselves in pole position to progress to the next round.<\/p>\n
Japan’s final game was against group leaders Italy, where they had to avoid defeat to guarantee their progression. Despite controlling 57% of possession and registering 19 shots compared to the European side’s 12, the two teams played out a goalless stalemate which saw Japan progress in second place.<\/p>\n
In the knockout stage, Japan will face the runners-up of Group F, which contains Argentina, Portugal, South Africa and fellow Asian side South Korea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan have secured their place in the knockout stage of the FIFA U20 World Cup in Poland, progressing from Group B in second place. The Samurai Blues were joined in the group stage by Italy, Ecuador and Mexico, after being placed in Pot 4 for the draw. However, the East Asian giants outdid expectations by securing their place in the knockout stage alongside Italy. Their campaign began with a 1-1 draw against Ecuador, as the side were forced to battle from behind after an unfortunate own goal from a set-piece. Japan were kept in the game by a brilliant penalty save from goalkeeper Tomoya Wakahara, and eventually found the equalizer … Continue reading “Japan Secure Place in U20 World Cup Knockout Stage”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":17703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-17702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","tag-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}