U-20 Japan National Team had its second match of the group stage in the FIFA U-20 World Cup Korea Republic 2017 against Uruguay on Wednesday 24 May at Suwon World Cup Stadium. As both teams had players suffering from injury or fatigue with a two-day interval after their previous match, they replaced several starting members. Japan coach UCHIYAMA Atsushi entered the match with FUJITANI So as right fullback, HARA Teruki and ICHIMARU Mizuki as defensive midfielders.

Against one of the tournament favourites Uruguay, who got through the South American qualifiers atop, Japan came on highly concentrated, showing swift transitions between offence and defence early on. They initiated their attacks from both flanks and came close to Uruguay goal when OGAWA Koki rushed in for FUNAKI Kakeru's left cross. On the other hand, Uruguay also tried to find their goal-scoring chances while taking care of Japan’s early attacks. Then, Nicolas DE LA CRUZ stole the ball from TOMIYASU Takehiro in the 11th minute and created a one-on-one opportunity with the goalkeeper, but his shot went wide to the left.

The Japanese side got off to a decent start but an unfortunate occurrence has forced Ogawa who had been playing well as their upfront target to leave the pitch for the rest of the match. Japan, however, managed to string neat passes even after KUBO Takefusa replaced the injured player, but struggled to create goal-scoring chances, as Japanese players looked back later, ‘We were forced to hold the ball at times (MIYOSHI Koji),’ and ‘Each of us had the ball too long (Ichimaru)’. Then, Uruguay found a gap in the Japanese defence in the 38th minute, when Jose Luis RODRIGUEZ responded to a long ball from the backline and fed the ball to Nicolas SCHIAPPACASSE, who beat few defenders with a slick touch to fire a right–footed shot into the back of the net to give his side an opening goal.....

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