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JAPAN vs RUSSIA

Match Report below

Match Stats: -

MAN OF THE MATCH: Junichi Inamoto (JAPAN)

Teams:

Japan:
           12-Seigo Narazaki 
             3-Naoki Matsuda 
           17-Tsuneyasu Miyamoto 
           16-Koji Nakata 
           20-Tomokazu Myojin 
             5-Junichi Inamoto (15-Takashi Fukunishi 85) 
           21-Kazuyuki Toda 
             7-Hidetoshi Nakata 
           18-Shinji Ono (6-Toshihiro Hattori 75)
           11-Takayuki Suzuki (10-Masashi Nakayama 72) 
           13-Atsushi Yanagisawa

Russia:
             1-Ruslan Nigmatullin 
             2-Yuri Kovtun 
             3-Yuri Nikiforov 
             7-Viktor Onopko 
             5-Andrei Solomatin 
             8-Valery Karpin 
             9-Yegor Titov 
             4-Alexei Smertin (11-Vladimir Beschastnykh 57) 
             6-Igor Semshov 
           20-Marat Izmailov (21-Dmitry Khokhlov 52) 
           19-Ruslan Pimenov (22-Dmitry Sychev 46)

Referee: Markus Merk (Germany)
Linesmen: Heiner Muller (Germany) & Evzen Amler (Czech Republic)
Attendance: 66,108

Match Report: -

A great performance all round for Japan as they hung on at the end to claim a victory over top of the group Russia. Russia were clearly not at their best as their finishing was poor all the way through the match. 

It started off quiet and there were no real chances, Inamoto sending the ball well wide of the mark, was the closest to the target as any other shot. But after the half time break, it was clear that the game had suddenly gained a spark as both teams pushed forward and used the ball much more like a team worthy of a place in the finals.

It was Japan who struck first as Inamoto found himself with ball 8 yards out and he sent the ball into the top right hand corner of the net for the only goal of the game. They may have gone 2-0 up as Nakata struck a shot from 25 yards out and it smacked of the crossbar, very unlucky.

Towards the end of the match Russia had most of the possesion but could not find a way through the Japanese defence. A good finish from arguably the man of the match, sees Japan go into a great position to qualify for the next stage.