Premier League

Japan face new ‘agony of Doha’ as their penalties fall short against Croatia

Japan defending against Croatia at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Japan had already shocked Germany and Spain in their group, but Croatia’s experience and some bad penalties were enough to prolong their second-round agony.

 

On October 28 1993, they took to the pitch for the final round of matches at the top of a six-team mini-tournament to decide Asia’s qualifiers for the World Cup finals in Doha, knowing that a win against Iraq would take them to to the USA the following summer for what would have been their first World Cup finals qualification.

With Saudi Arabia and South Korea just below them in the table, they led 2-1 going into stoppage-time before a goal from the Iraqi subsitute Jaffar Omran coupled with results elsewhere put them out of the competition while Saudi Arabia and South Korea, their biggest rivals, qualified in their place. This match has become known in Japanese footballing circles as ‘The Agony of Doha’.

Japan have qualified for every World Cup since then but they’ve never got past the first knockout stage of the competition. Four times now they’ve got that far – once as hosts – but every time they’ve fallen at that hurdle.

In 2002, they lost as hosts to Turkey. In 2010 they were beaten on penalties by Paraguay, and in 2018 they were two goals up against Belgium with just over 20 minutes to play before folding and losing 3-2.

And in the end they couldn’t overcome Croatia, either. It took the first penalty shootout of the tournament to separate these two teams, with Takumi Minamino, Kaoru Mitoma and Maya Yoshida all having their penalty kicks saved by the Croatian goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic, as Croatia, beaten finalists last time around, progressed at the end of two hours of football during which they’d offered little indication of why they really deserved a place in the quarter-finals of the World Cup.

Tenacious and experienced they may well be, but that was about the best that could be said for them by the end of this match. 

Sometimes we get so caught up in the moment of a surprise result that we don’t take the time to consider where that surprise came from in the first place. For Japan to beat Germany was one thing, for them to go on and beat Spain was something else altogether, and those wins didn’t come from nowhere. They came from a team who played without fear, and with a degree of flexibility that could turn a weighted blanket of a defence into a sudden, waspish attack.

These were no conventional ‘upset’ results, either. Japan arrived with a plan, and a…

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