Desk news: Costa Rica put a huge dent in Japan’s hopes of reaching the World Cup last 16 as they recovered from their hammering by Spain to claim a surprise 1-0 victory in Group E on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Keysher Fuller’s 81st-minute effort, Costa Rica’s first shot on target in a dreary game, stunned the drum-beating Japanese fans in the stadium and left the group wide open.<\/p>\n
Japan’s historic victory over Germany in their opener coupled with Costa Rica’s 7-0 drubbing by Spain cleared the way for Japan to reach the last 16 with a game to spare.<\/p>\n
But a much-changed line-up failed to spark and their hopes of reaching the knockout stage for a fourth time are now left hanging in the balance with their final game against Spain.<\/p>\n
Costa Rica, written off before kickoff, are now level on three points with Japan and have a chance to reach the last 16.<\/p>\n
Heavyweights Spain and Germany play later.<\/p>\n
A first-half of mind-numbing tedium even tested the patience of the drum-banging Japanese fans massed in their blue shirts at one end of the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium.<\/p>\n
Apart from a two-minute burst at the start of the game by Japan, the rest of the opening half was played at snail’s pace.<\/p>\n
For Costa Rica the lack of goalmouth action was probably most welcome seeing as they conceded three times in the opening half an hour against Spain.<\/p>\n
Both goalkeepers were redundant and the only incidents that could pass as goalmouth action was a cross by Japan’s Ritsu Doan that flashed across the goal and a scooped shot high over the crossbar by Costa Rica forward Joel Campbell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Desk news: Costa Rica put a huge dent in Japan’s hopes of reaching the World Cup last 16 as they recovered from their hammering by Spain to claim a surprise 1-0 victory in Group E on Sunday. Keysher Fuller’s 81st-minute effort, Costa Rica’s first shot on target in a dreary game, stunned the drum-beating Japanese fans in the stadium and left the group wide open. Japan’s historic victory over Germany in their opener coupled with Costa Rica’s 7-0 drubbing by Spain cleared the way for Japan to reach the last<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29785,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29783\/revisions\/29785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}