On the evening of February 1, Beijing time, the World Preliminary Round of 12 in Asia ushered in the 8th round of competition, and the Japanese men's football team defeated the Saudi men's football team 2-0 at home and successfully completed revenge. After the victory, the Japanese team won a wave of 5 consecutive wins, creating the longest consecutive wins in this year's Round of 12 and one point away from the first in the group.
As the asian 4 champions, Japan has participated in the World Cup finals 6 times in its history, second only to The 10-participating South Korean team in Asia. As a qualifying favorite, the Japanese team went low and high, after winning 1 and losing 2 in the first 3 rounds, and then maintaining a full winning record in the next 4 rounds, and currently accumulated 16 points to push Australia to rank second in the group.
This round of home against Saudi Arabia is very crucial for Japan, winning can continue to rank second in the group, and the winless team may be reversed by Australia to fall to third.
The last two qualifiers have been at home, with Japan winning against Saudi Arabia. In terms of starting, the Japanese team continued to send takumi Minamino, Junya Ito, Yuto Nagatomo, Isamu Ōki, Ando Hang and other key players.
In the 31st minute of the first half, Junya Ito forced a breakthrough on the side, and then crossed the middle of the road, Andaku Daisuke also let go, takumi Minamino at the back point clipped the defender and shot hard, the ball was blocked by the Saudi goalkeeper and still bounced into the net, japan led 1-0.
At the end of the first half, the Japanese team scored, possession rate, shots, shots on target, corner kicks and other data were in the lead, and the Saudi team fell into passivity.
In the second half, it was Junya Ito who directly threw a kick at the front of the penalty area to help Japan expand the score 2-0.
As one of the Japan internationals who are not in the top five leagues, Jun Ito also plays for Genk in the Belgian first division, scoring 5 goals and assisting 9 times in 23 league appearances this season, and has performed very well. In addition, in the two-legged match against the national football team in this round of 12, Jun Ito also had an excellent performance and was the nemesis of the national football team.
In the end, japan won 2-0 against Saudi Arabia with the joint goals of Takumi Minamino and Junya Ito, repaying the 0-1 defeat in the first leg of last year.
After the victory, the Japanese team reached 18 points, continuing to rank second in the group, only 1 point away from the first-ranked Saudi Arabian team, and the situation of competing for the second place changed dramatically. Australia, which came later, beat Oman, so the difference between the top three teams in the group was only 2 points, and the suspense of the group was back.