The national team of Costa Rica has found its blow

The Japanese national team, sensationally beating the Germans in the opening round of the World Cup, failed the next match. Despite a noticeable advantage throughout almost the entire meeting, she managed to lose to the Costa Rican team defeated by the Spaniards in the first round – 0:1. This result confused the situation in group E.

If the participants in this match wanted him to top the list of the most boring at the current World Cup, then they did a good job of coping with the task. Pepper in the game was a tiny pinch. In the Japanese, at least some more or less clearly drawn plan was felt: if possible, use transfers to the flank as often as possible, preferably the left one, stretch the Costa Rican defense, try to create emptiness in the center, climb into them. At least the Japanese wanted to threaten the gate. Another thing is that things went badly with the implementation of the plan. Paradoxically, in the match with the Germans, the Japanese national team looked much more interesting ahead than in the match with an opponent who conceded seven unanswered goals from the Spaniards a few days ago.

The Costa Rica team did not have such a simple plan. Well, except to consider them the maximum saturation of the players of their half. A new humiliation to such a Costa Rican variant, of course, did not shine, as, indeed, integration into the race for tickets to the playoffs. For this, some kind of counterplay was needed. And all of it, in fact, came down to rare standards earned on someone else’s half, which the Costa Rica team also performed in such a way that even a small shadow of impending trouble did not flicker in the Japanese penalty area.

The beginning of the second half set, however, to the positive. In the five minutes that have passed since the break, the Japanese team has dealt more blows to other people’s goal than in the entire previous half of the match – three against two. One of these shots – Hidemas Morita – the famous Costa Rican goalkeeper Keylor Navas had to parry, making a rather spectacular jump.

And in principle, even if we forget about these attempts to strain Navas, the Japanese began to look more attractive: more connections from full-backs, more promising passes into the penalty area. Even the stadium, whose singing until now was like an endless lullaby, got a little excited.

And the mentor of the Japanese Hajime Moriyasu, as in the match with the Germans, showed that substitutions are his forte. Both Hiroki Ito and Takumo Asana turned out to be an unconditional strengthening for his team. And Ito, with a deft turn around its axis immediately after processing the transfer and with a sharp jerk, almost gave the Japanese a penalty. Francisco Calvo brought him down actually on the penalty line.

But the most surprising thing is that this Japanese impulse seems to have a little bit turned on quite dreary Costa Ricans. Although their goal was still unexpected, like a warm sun in gray November Moscow. Still, even the revived Costa Rica team did not pull on one that the Japanese should be afraid of.

Trouble was brought to them not by one of her fairly well-known attackers – for example, Joel Campbell, but by defender Keisher Fuller, who found himself two dozen meters from the Japanese gate, who succeeded in a good trick. He quietly, but on a tricky trajectory, spun the ball into the far nine, and the position of the Japanese goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda, who left the gate far, only confirmed that, unlike Keylor Navas, no matter how many goals he conceded from the Spaniards, he is a link for his team by no means the strongest. Gonda touched the ball with his gloves, but could not slow it down.

And Navas in the end, feeling the proximity of a victory born literally from nothing, stood as an impregnable rock, and the three points obtained with his colossal help confused the situation in the group. In terms of points scored, the Costa Rica team caught up with the Japanese team that just seemed to be moving in a direct course in the playoffs. Regardless of the result of the late evening Moscow time match between the Spaniards and the Germans, now this course cannot be called direct. In the final round, the Japanese will play with the Spaniards, and they seem to have no right to lose, otherwise the same vainly buried Costa Ricans may turn out to be in the 1/8 finals instead of them.

Alexey Dospekhov