Japan came to Dallas needing a point and left with a place in the Round of 32 \u2014 and the quiet satisfaction of a prediction starting to materialize.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wrote about Japan being dark horses before a ball was kicked. Three games in, nobody’s laughing. Sweden got the draw they needed too, courtesy of a goal from the one man on the field who wasn’t supposed to be the story.<\/p>\n
Here are my takeaways from Japan’s 1-1 draw with Sweden:<\/p>\n
(Photo by Luciano Bisbal\/Eurasia Sport Images\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Second place, unbeaten, five points, and not a single opponent enjoyed the 90 minutes against them. That’s Japan’s group stage in a sentence. Hajime Moriyasu’s side don’t overwhelm you \u2014 they suffocate you. They sit in a tidy, disciplined block, let you have the ball in the places that don’t hurt, then break at a speed that does. Daizen Maeda’s opener was the blueprint: win it back, three passes, finish.<\/p>\n What makes them so hard to play is that there’s no obvious area to attack. The spine does this every week in Europe, so the big moments don’t rattle them. Feyenoord’s Ayase Ueda’s raw pace will pose a threat to any high line. Behind him, the guile of Maeda, the passing of Daichi Kamada, and the directness of Ritsu Doan mean the danger can come from anywhere. Three matches into their World Cup, it’s clear they’ve been the toughest team in this group to beat, and nobody’s calling that a reach anymore.<\/p>\n (Photo by Jose Hernandez\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Now the rewards, which are frankly cruel. Japan’s prize for going unbeaten is Brazil, the Group C winners, on June 29 in Houston \u2014 Vin\u00edcius Junior flying, Neymar back in the picture. Sweden’s reward for surviving is likely facing either Kylian Mbapp\u00e9’s France or Erling Haaland’s Norway on June 30. The Dutch, for topping the group, draw tournament darling Morocco.<\/p>\n So the dark horses meet the Sele\u00e7\u00e3o, and Sweden’s strikers get to test themselves against France. If Japan is the real thing, we’re about to find out in the loudest way imaginable. There’s no bigger exam in the Round of 32.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Japan came to Dallas needing a point and left with a place in the Round of 32 \u2014 and the quiet satisfaction of a prediction starting to materialize.\u00a0 I wrote about Japan being dark horses before a ball was kicked. Three games in, nobody’s laughing. Sweden got the draw they needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}