Saitama: Hiroshi Kiyotake’s first-half penalty and a Genki Haraguchi strike ten minutes from time handed Japan a 2-1 win over Saudi Arabia to move the Samurai Blue level with the West Asian outfit at the top of Group B as the race for automatic qualification spots for the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 heats up.
Kiyotake (pictured above, middle) won and then calmly converted the 45 minutes spot kick to send Japan to the break with a narrow lead before Haraguchi scored for the fourth straight match in the 80 minutes.
Defender Omar Hawsawi grabbed a 90 minutes goal for the Saudis but Japan withstood some strong late pressure to collect maximum points in front of another sellout crowd at Saitama Stadium.
"I'm proud of my players to have defeated a strong Saudi Arabia side that up to now have been the best team in the group," said Japan coach Vahid Halilhodzic.
"It's a good victory and we deserved to win and could have scored more goals although it's disappointing to have conceded late. There were certain moments when the team were not calm in front of the goal; we could have scored four or five and towards the end we lacked calmness so I'm not totally satisfied."
With star names Keisuke Honda, Shinji Kagawa and Shinji Okazaki all starting on the bench, manager Vahid Halilhodzic handed 22-year-old Yuya Kubo his starting debut and the Swiss-based attacker was a lively threat on the right in a new-look 4-2-1-3 formation for the hosts, seeing his 22 minutes shot deflected wide after an earlier chance for another ‘new’ face in the recalled Yuya Osako.
The visitors started to work their way into things as the half unfolded with Yahya Al Shehri (pictured below, left) just failing to meet Hassan Muath’s cross from the right in the 26 minutes before both Osako and Genki Haraguchi (pictured above, left) had further half-chances for Japan.
Just as it looked as though the teams would head to the break scoreless, the hosts were awarded a late penalty when Abdulmalek Al Khaibri was adjudged to have handled inside the area.
Kiyotake, handed the central playmaking duties here, was the player to step up and he sent his shot low to the left to send Japan to the break with the narrowest of leads.
Honda was introduced for Kubo at the break and it didn’t take the AC Milan man long to get involved, almost scooping home a Kiyotake freekick from the left three minutes after the restart as the hosts had further chances on the break but firstly Osako and then Haraguchi failed to capitalise on those openings.
The hosts continued to dominate much of the second-half proceedings with defender Maya Yoshida coming close from a 73 minutes corner before Honda saw his powerful drive sharply turned away by Mohammed Al Owais in the Saudi goal.
That dominance was finally rewarded in the 80 minutes as a move started by Honda and which involved touches from Yuto Nagatomo and Kagawa was finished by Haraguchi as he became the first Japanese player to score in four straight matches in the final group stage of qualification.
The visitors kept pushing though and saw defender Omar Hawsawi tuck home a 90 minutes goal before captain Osama Hawsawi was sent off and then substitute Nassir Al Shamrani forced a sharp late save from Shusaku Nishikawa with Japan managing to hang on after a frantic finish to claim a valuable 2-1 win.
"We knew that Japan are the favourites in this group and that to beat them we needed to have every player be at his top level but unfortunately that was not the case today," said Saudi Arabia coach Bert van Marwijk.
"Sometimes, you saw that we can play football really well but it was not enough with too many periods during the game when we were not ourselves. It's difficult to accept losing but we have to be honest and say that Japan deserved to win but in this group we have the same points and the group will be close."
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