On the evening of April 25, Beijing time, a key battle in the 1/4 finals of the U23 Asian Cup was played by the Qatar Olympic Games against the Japanese National Olympic Games. The two teams fought hard for 90 minutes to draw 2-2, and in extra time, Japan scored two goals in a row to solve the game, and finally eliminated Qatar with a total score of 4-2, becoming the first team to advance to the semi-finals, and it is also close to qualifying for the Olympic Games.
As the host, Qatar stopped in the group stage last time, and this round has improved by leaps and bounds, beating Indonesia and Jordan in a row to advance to the quarterfinals, and then drawing with Australia to lock up the top spot in the group.
Since Japan and South Korea are in Group B, Qatar will inevitably meet one of the teams, and the final quarter-final opponent will be Japan, which lost to South Korea in the final round and missed the top spot in the group.
As the champion of the 2016 tournament, Japan won the third place in the last edition, and this time it was not competitive to win the championship in the face of the encirclement and suppression of various strong teams. Just one minute into the opening period, Japan got off to a dream start:
Kaede Yamada took the ball and advanced to the top of the arc of the penalty area, and suddenly chose to shoot directly into the net, and the whole team celebrated wildly.
Faced with a one-goal deficit, Qatar began to fight back wildly. In the 24th minute, Yaqidi sent a high-quality cross from the right, and Ravi jumped high to head the goal, and the score became 1-1, and the two sides returned to the same starting line.
In the 37th minute, Japan missed a great opportunity to take the lead again: Kushi Matsuki swept in front of goal, and Masoya pushed an empty goal wide when he was unmarked.
In the 39th minute, Qatari goalkeeper Al Balid jumped up and kicked on Madai Hosoya's stomach, and the referee sent Palid straight red after watching the VAR replay, and Japan began to play one more person.
In the 49th minute, Qatar relied on a free kick opportunity and scored with a header from Jassim to rewrite the score to 2-1, and then in the 67th minute, Japan relied on Seiji Kimura's goal to draw the score at 2-2. After that, neither team changed the score, and the game went into extra time.
In the 101st minute, Shindai Hosoya scored a goal. In the 112th minute, Kotaro Uchino also scored. Japan scored two goals in just 11 minutes to win 4-2 against Qatar.
Depending on the situation, Japan's next semi-final opponent is the winner between Iraq and Vietnam.
According to the rules, the top three teams will go straight to the Paris Olympics, and the fourth place team will need to participate in the play-offs.
The host Qatar missed the Olympic Games, and our national Olympic Games also failed to complete a breakthrough, after losing to Japan and South Korea in the first two rounds of the group stage, it has been determined one round in advance, and defeated the United Arab Emirates in the last round of the battle of honor, ending the 7-game losing streak in the U23 Asian Cup, and also the first victory in the last 6 years.
So far, the final ranking of the National Olympic Games is 9th in this competition, which is also the highest ranking since the team participated in the U23 Asian Cup.