Arab Canada News
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Published: November 27, 2022
The Costa Rican national team compensates for its historic loss against its Spanish counterpart and remains in the qualifying race after defeating the 'Blue Samurai'.
Costa Rica achieved a difficult win over Japan 1-0 on Sunday at Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium as part of the fifth group matches of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, while at the same time providing a great service to Germany before their match against Spain later.
Kaiser Fuller scored the only goal of the match in the 81st minute. Costa Rica compensated for its heavy defeat against Spain by seven goals to nil in the first round, while the Japanese team failed to achieve their second win in the tournament after their first loud loss against Germany 2-1.
On the other hand, Germany was facing the risk of elimination if Japan gained a draw or win, in case they lost against Spain, but now they can even fall against their rival and remain in the race to claim one of the two tickets.
Spain meets Japan on Thursday in the last round, and Germany meets Costa Rica.
Despite the spectacular win over Germany 2-1 at the start of the "Blue Samurai" journey in the tournament, their coach Hajime Moriyasu decided to make five changes to the starting lineup, most notably the participation of Ritsu Doan who came on as a substitute against Germany and scored a goal.
The Japanese team entered the match aiming to gain the three points that would put them in a very strong position to reach the round of sixteen for the fourth time in their history after 2002, when they co-hosted the tournament with South Korea, and in 2010 and 2018.
On the other hand, Costa Rica, which reached the quarter-finals of the Brazil World Cup in 2014 before narrowly losing to the Netherlands on penalties, entered the match to compensate for its heavy loss against Spain by seven goals to nil.
Colombian Luis Fernando Suárez, Costa Rica's coach, said: "We did our job as usual. This confirms that the previous match was a passing incident. We bore the responsibilities, we played, and the most important thing is the result."
The first half was very dull and the two goalkeepers were honorable guests of the match due to the many passing mistakes made by the Japanese players, while Costa Rica's attacks were very timid.
At the beginning of the second half, the Japanese coach made several adjustments to his lineup, and his team started strongly with a powerful shot from Hidema Morita that Keylor Navas intercepted (47), then a weak header by Asano into the hands of Navas (48).
Japan had two free kicks on the edge of the area without finding the net.
Amid Japanese dominance, and on the first shot towards the Japanese goal in the second half, Costa Rica succeeded in opening the scoring when the Japanese defense made a mistake in leaving their area, Yeltsin Tejeda seized the ball and passed it to Kaiser Fuller who shot a curling shot from outside the area that the advancing Japanese goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda touched but did not prevent it from entering his goal (81).
Ironically, Fuller's shot was the first for his national team in this tournament to hit the target. The Japanese team tried to equalize in the late minutes of the match but to no avail.
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