Two games. Seven goals scored. None allowed.
Japan has arrived at the World Cup with its foot on the gas and emerged with two easy wins. Four days after opening with a 5-0 thrashing of Zambia, Japan dispatched Costa Rica, 2-0, with goals three minutes apart midway through the first half.
Hikaru Naomoto and Aoba Fujino did the honors on Wednesday, becoming the fifth and sixth players to score for Japan in its first two games. But it has been the manner in which Japan has won — with an abundance of speed and technical ability and a defense that has surrendered only two shots on target through two games — that raise an intriguing question:
Might be time to start including Japan, a World Cup champion only a decade ago, in the conversation about which team might win this year’s tournament? Japan’s coach, Futoshi Ikeda, raised the prospect after his team’s opening win. Its second will not change his opinion.
“We have these players who have grown up seeing Japan become world champions,” Ikeda told reporters after the Zambia game. “We would like to take up the challenge again to be champions.”
It has been more than a decade since Japan won the 2011 World Cup, beating the United States. But its fortunes faded after that: Routed by the United States in the 2015 final, Japan was eliminated in the round of 16 four years ago.
Few experts had included them on the growing list of title contenders in this year’s expanded tournament. Now Japan (along with Spain) is one of the first teams through to the knockouts: Spain’s 5-0 victory against Zambia on Wednesday sent both Japan and Spain on to the round of 16.
Their meeting to close the group stage on Monday might offer a good guide of which team can truly take aim at the title.
Ireland had notions of a first World Cup win on Wednesday, but it was ultimately Canada that came out on top, 2-1, ending Ireland’s hopes of advancing further in the tournament.
After being held scoreless in a draw with Nigeria to start the World Cup, Canada was able to finally get points on the board with an own goal late in the first half and a second-half strike from Adriana Leon.
The own goal in the 49th minute, which tied the game and gave Canada a needed boost, capped a frenetic first half in which it seemed everything had gone Ireland’s way as rain poured down in Perth, Australia.
Canada entered this World Cup as the reigning gold medalist from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. But the Canadians have only advanced past the round of 16 in the World Cup once, and have been hoping this time for a deeper run. Those plans got off to a rocky start against Nigeria and looked to be even more in doubt early against Ireland.
Ireland’s first-ever World Cup goal came in style. The Irish captain, Katie McCabe, stepped up for a corner kick in the fourth minute and let fly a curving, left-footed shot that found the upper left corner of the goal, just over the outstretched hands of Canadian goaltender Kailen Sheridan.
Scoring directly from a corner kick is rare — a feat known colloquially in the sport as an Olimpico. Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. star, has scored two such goals, both during the Olympics themselves.
The second half was all Canada, which dominated possession of the ball.
Canada, with the win, put itself back in prime position to reach the round of 16, though Australia’s game against Nigeria on Thursday will make clear what each of those teams need out of their third game. Ireland, with two losses, will not advance.
Spain and Japan seem to to be trying to one-up another from afar. Soon, they’ll get a direct showdown to see who emerges from their group with the more favorable path in the knockout stages (Spain, with one more goal than Japan, has a slight advantage in that it would finish first in the case of a draw).
Soon after Japan beat Costa Rica, Spain pounced on Zambia, relentlessly attacking a team that was down to its third-string goalkeeper and clearly overwhelmed defensively.
Of course, some shots were just unstoppable no matter what, like a laser shot from the right foot of Teresa Abelleira that caught a tight corner of the goal.
Alexia Putellas, the reigning world player of the year, returned to start in this game after coming in as a substitute in Spain’s first match, an important step for Spain as it tries to ramp up her play.
Many fans have been looking ahead to the showdown between Spain and Japan, which is scheduled for Monday. That will likely be a contest to determine who wins Group C, though both teams are threats to make even deeper runs.
Japan’s five goals were the headline from its opening win against Zambia, and it followed that up by overwhelming Costa Rica on Wednesday, 2-0.
Rose Lavelle is certainly aware that Wednesday’s match against the Netherlands at the Women’s World Cup is a big deal.
The game is a rematch of the 2019 World Cup final, won by the United States, and of a meeting between the teams in the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics, also won by the United States. Its result most likely will determine which team will finish first in the Group E, and thus which one will get an easier path in the knockout stages.
For all those reasons, for all that history, for all the stars on both teams, the game is, by definition, a big deal. But Lavelle runs on one setting: chill. So at a news conference on Tuesday in Wellington, Lavelle offered brief answers about her status (“I’m ready”), her health (“good”) and her maturation into a starring role on the U.S. team (“I’m just … me”).
She gave no indication that she considered the big game a bigger deal than any other. She predicted, in fact, that it would be “fun.”
About the only revelations in 30 minutes of questions and answers alongside Coach Vlatko Andonovski was that Lavelle might be in for a more prominent role against the Netherlands — her presence at the pregame news conference alone suggested she might be in for a start — and that Lavelle considers quite a few things to be “fun.”
Among them:
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The U.S. team’s win over the Netherlands in the 2019 World Cup final.
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Her memory of that game.
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Thursday’s rematch against the Dutch.
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Watching World Cups.
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Playing in World Cups.
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Scoring a goal in the World Cup final.
Yes, Lavelle said that scoring the clinching goal for the United States in the World Cup final was fun, one of nine times she used the word in her news conference. And in her defense, that goal in 2019 looked like a lot fun: a full-speed straight through the Dutch defense, a cutback to split two defenders, a low shot rocketed into the corner of the goal with her left foot, a celebration of a lifetime goal achieved.
The goal remains one of the touchstone moments of Lavelle’s career. But asked if it had changed her life, or her, in any way, she seemed to shrug.
“I always say I think I would have expected a moment like that to feel like I’m different, or change me,” she said. “But I don’t really feel like it did. It was a goal and it was fun, but, I don’t know, I feel like I’m still just, me.”
One of the most highly anticipated matchups of this World Cup comes with huge stakes, since it most likely will determine which of these teams has an easier path out of Group E. But it comes off unsatisfying performances by both the United States (in a 3-0 win over Vietnam) and the Netherlands (1-0 against Portugal) in their opening games.
“We weren’t always clicking on the field,” the United States co-captain Alex Morgan said this week.
The Americans figure to have a tougher task against the Dutch. The Netherlands beat its first opponent, Portugal, by only a single goal, but did not allow a shot on target until the 82nd minute. And therein lies the problem facing the United States: that sturdiness, discipline and organization will be tough to break down.
Their game is scheduled for Thursday afternoon in New Zealand, or 9 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday.
Norway is in about the worst position it could have imagined going into its third game of the Women’s World Cup: It has a loss and a draw; its best player, the 2018 Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg, did not play on Tuesday because of discomfort she felt during warm-ups; and one of its most respected midfielders, Caroline Graham Hansen, tore into her coach after the game for dropping her from the lineup.
“People talk all the time about ‘standing together as a team’ and ‘standing together as a nation,’” Graham Hansen told the Norwegian broadcaster Viaplay after the game. “It is not true that you should get anything for free in this life. But I thought I had earned a certain amount of respect.”
Still, because of a strange set of results in its group, in which every team but the Norwegians has a win, Norway is very much in play to go from last in the Group A standings to the round of 16 if it can beat the Philippines on Sunday.
The scenarios for advancing at the World Cup can often be convoluted, but we’re here to help. The Upshot has again produced a team-by-team look at who would move on given the possible outcomes for each game, accounting for the complex system of tiebreakers that comes into play each tournament.
The charts show, for example, that Norway — which entered the tournament as the top team in its group based on the FIFA rankings — could use a bit of help from Switzerland. And, conversely, the math shows that Switzerland probably might want Norway to win, too, to give the Swiss some chances to advance even with a loss. New Zealand and the Philippines each can advance with a win, but also with a draw, depending on how things play out.
These scenarios will be updated as each group wraps up its second set of games, giving you an immediate look at what each team will need in its final group-stage game to advance to the knockout rounds.
