Japan's magic fades with disappointing loss to Costa Rica

When did the clock strike midnight on Cinderella darling Japan in its 1-0 defeat to Costa Rica on Sunday?

It could have been when Hajime Moriyasu decided to rotate half of the starting lineup that stunned world No. 11 Germany just four days earlier — a result that was arguably the Samurai Blue’s best ever at a FIFA World Cup — in service of a conservative gameplan that hardly fit the occasion.

Maybe it was when Japan’s attacking foursome spent much of the first half sleepwalking and failed to create much of anything in the way of scoring opportunities against a Central American side that gave up seven goals to presumptive group favorite Spain in its opener.

Or perhaps it was after a series of baffling defensive misplays — from the midfield to the goal line — that allowed the Costa Ricans to score in the 81st minute with their first shot on target — not of the half, or of the game, but of the entire tournament.

Much like the act of watching these 90 minutes — whether as a fan at Ahmed bin Ali Stadium in Doha or in bars and living rooms across Japan — to pinpoint the exact moment when Japan’s dashing carriage turned back into a pumpkin is an exercise in futility.

The magic is gone, and only uncertain darkness awaits.

Sunday’s 1-0 defeat leaves the Samurai Blue with three points and zero goal difference after two games, meaning they will have to accomplish what many universally agreed was the most intimidating of conditions: A win — or at least a fortunate series of results — in Thursday night’s Group E finale against Spain, which drew 1-1 with Germany late Sunday night and will also be trying to secure its own place in the knockouts rather than rotating its key players ahead of the round of 16.

What’s most distressing isn’t that Japan is in this position heading into its final game — after all, a narrow loss to Germany and a win over Costa Rica would also have left the team with an identical three points and a need-to-win game against the 2010 champion.

But as everyone’s favorite fictional head coach Ted Lasso once said, it’s the hope that kills you. And hope is what Japanese supporters — festooned in their blue uniforms, hachimaki headbands, homemade samurai armor and kimono — had in spades following the “Miracle of Doha,” making Sunday’s result all the much more heartbreaking.

Morning newspaper headlines dubbed the defeat a “grave miscalculation,” with Sponichi writing that Japan “threw the first half down the drain” and Hochi declaring it a “Moriyasu misfire.”

The majority of the blame surely deserves to be placed squarely on the shoulders of Moriyasu, who took his accumulated goodwill from the result against Die Mannschaft — which drew praise even from critics who have dogged him since his 2018 appointment — and squandered it on a lineup that offered nary a hint of a threat throughout the first 45 minutes.

“Japan didn’t need to rotate its lineup that much,” former national team forward Jo Shoji said on his YouTube channel. “With Costa Rica defending that hard, Japan needed to bring on the members from the Germany game and try to score in the first half, otherwise this is what happens.”

Of the five substitutes who came on to help the Samurai Blue shock Germany, only midfielder Ritsu Doan found his way into Japan’s 11 against Los Ticos. But unlike the daring figure he cut on Wednesday, he looked as lost as his fellow attackers, including World Cup debutants Yuki Soma on the opposite wing and Ayase Ueda up front.

“Even though we kept saying, ‘don’t rush, don’t rush,’ but if you look only at the result we got caught in their trap,” Doan said. “Maybe somewhere in the back of my head there was a voice telling me, ‘we want to score early.’”

Also scrambling for purchase in the fog was central attacker Daichi Kamada, who struggled to make an impact against his Bundesliga-based counterparts in the first game and showed little sign of improvement against an organized Costa Rican defense.

“Personally and as a team there were a lot of easy mistakes,” the Eintracht Frankfurt star said. “That was the worst first half I’ve played all season ... if it ended there I would have absolutely regretted it for the rest of my life.

“Any national team would struggle against such a compact and aggressive defense, but that’s what it means to play for your country and it showed me how difficult World Cup games can be.”

Though Hidemasa Morita’s return to the starting lineup — restoring his reliable defensive midfield partnership with Wataru Endo — was reassuring, the back line brought its own frailties. Moriyasu replaced injured right back Hiroki Sakai with Miki Yamane in the formation but chose to keep Yuto Nagatomo, Maya Yoshida and Ko Itakura in place.

The halftime substitution of Hiroki Ito for Nagatomo and Wednesday’s game-winning goalscorer Takuma Asano for Ueda heralded the same 3-4-3 shift fans saw against Germany, and indeed Japan came blazing out of the gates with Morita’s probing shot less than 30 seconds after play resumed.

More changes came as Kaoru Mitoma relieved Yamane in the 62nd minute, with Junya Ito coming on five minutes later for Doan. The pair added more dynamism but raised more doubts in Moriyasu’s decision-making: Why had Japan’s best and brightest spent more than an hour on the bench when they could have made a greater impact from the opening whistle?

“We were supposed to add some energy to the team as substitutes but we couldn’t give them any power,” Mitoma said. “However many times you attack, it’s meaningless if you can’t finish it off with a goal. We could have done so much more.”

As the clock ticked forward and a goal seemed no closer, it seemed inevitable that the Samurai Blue would find some way to break fans’ hearts, outplayed not by Costa Rica but by themselves.

In the 81st minute the glass slipper dropped, after a series of misplays and poor clearance attempts by captain Yoshida and Morita enabled Keysher Fuller to curl a shot past goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda, who was several meters off his line and only managed to brush his fingertips against the ball, and into the net.

“I thought my pass (to Morita) would connect,” Yoshida reflected after the game. “At that point in the game it might have been better if I’d cleared the ball forward.

“This is exactly the kind of development we needed to avoid. ... We haven’t gained anything and we haven’t lost anything. It’s too early to throw away everything.”

Takumi Minamino immediately swapped places with Soma on the pitch. But the damage was already done and Japan rarely threatened in the final minutes, its best chance for an equalizer coming in the 88th when Kamada’s shot was blocked by a Costa Rican defender and contained after a brief scramble by goalkeeper Keylor Navas.

Though Moriyasu is no stranger to finding results with his back against the wall — recall not only the Germany game, but the October 2021 qualifier against Australia that turned Japan’s campaign around after two losses in its first three games — he will find the upcoming Group E climax against Spain to be a far greater challenge.

Not only will he be facing a superior tactician in Luis Enrique, but he will head to Khalifa International Stadium knowing that Sunday’s showing has potentially cost him the confidence of the fans who have backed him through thick and thin over the last four years.

“The only thing Japan can do against Spain is use the same tactics they did against Germany,” veteran commentator Sergio Echigo wrote for Nikkan. “If Japan goes for a win and attacks from the beginning, things will become more difficult if Spain scores first.

“The only opportunity Japan had to aggressively go for a win was today against Costa Rica.”

Moriyasu, for his part, indicated that he had not yet lost faith in his tactics, saying his strategy against Costa Rica was formed with the decider against Spain in mind.

“With games as intense as they have been against Germany and Costa Rica, in order to be able to play with the same intensity against Spain, I made choices to raise Japan’s chance of winning,” he said. “The result in the end was bad, but I believe what we tried was necessary to win, and I hope that’s how everyone will evaluate us.”

Moriyasu will once again be faced with important choices over the next three days. If he makes the wrong ones, the storybook of Japan’s 2022 World Cup journey will be closed for good.