Football can be exciting and very cruel at the same time. Croatia’s experience helped them to quash Japan. The fight to be in the last 8 of the world cup is getting more and more interesting with the games like this. Croatia became the 5th team to be on the list of quarterfinalists of FIFA World Cup 2022.
Both teams started slow, Croatia spent much more time on the ball having possession of 59 percent. As the first half of the game came to an end, Daizen Maeda took an opportunity to put Japan ahead by scoring a goal from a header.
This lead didn’t survive for much longer as at the beginning of the 2nd half of the match, Evan Perisic scored an equalizer to revive Croatia in the game. That goal was Perisic’s 10th goal at a major tournament for his nation.
Dominik Livakovic of Croatia becomes the third goalkeeper in World Cup history to make three saves in a single penalty shootout, joining Ricardo of Portugal in 2006 against England and Danijel Subasic of Croatia in 2018 against Denmark.
Yes, it is a very sad moment for Japan and the Japanese team, who survived the group of death in this tournament, beating teams like Germany and Spain. Now they lost in a knockout game.
Though the Japanese fans are not very pleased with their team’s performance and now bashing them on Twitter. Let’s have a look at some fans’ reactions to the game.
Fans Reaction after Japan’s loss
According to fans, this is the worst penalty shootout ever! I mean can’t blame the fans at Japanese player did put much effort into the penalty shootout.
So, I guess he is right. They should’ve put in some more effort.
As I said before, there were no efforts from the Japanese team in the Penalty.
So after a good 120 minutes of the game, Japan just loses the end in the penalty shootout. Sure, this would be very hurtful.
But they should be happy as they very the underdogs of the tournament, despite being in the toughest group, they still made it to the knockout stages, beating teams like Germany and Spain. Not easy at all. So, they played well!
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