Japanese salarymen dashing to work Friday exchanged high fives with bleary-eyed football fans celebrating after the country reached the last 16 of the World Cup — most blissfully unaware of a backlash against their team. Japan lost 1-0 to Poland in Russia on Thursday in a match that ended in farce as the Samurai Blue ran down the clock knowing unless they picked up a pair of yellow cards or Senegal equalised against Colombia in the other Group H game, they would go through.
“It was definitely a little bit fishy and it’s not nice to hear a crowd booing like that but, well, we reached the knockout stage — so ‘banzai!’… I guess,” advertising copywriter Ken Yazawa told AFP. “It’s only the third time we’ve got this far,” added the 44-year-old. “Hopefully we can go even further, although now we have to beat Belgium to reach the quarter-finals — nightmare!”
Jeered off the pitch, Japan’s tactics in Russia were slammed on social media, with some Japanese Twitter users also putting the boot into coach Akira Nishino for ordering his team to play keep-ball in their own half. One disgruntled fan noted the irony of Japan becoming the first team to advance under the “fair play” rule after collecting fewer bookings than Senegal, posting: “It’s funny how Japan went through playing anti-football but we live to fight another day.”
Another blamed football’s governing body for introducing the rule. “I doubt FIFA expected to see their fair play rule being used so unfairly,” he tweeted a little after the final whistle sounded at around 1am local time.