If sport is war without weapons, the knockout rounds of the Fifa World Cup is its most brutal stage—one that brooks no momentary lapse of tenacity. Ask Germany and the Netherlands. These North European powerhouses, who have 11 final appearances between them, were knocked out in penalty shootouts by Paraguay and Morocco, who have one quarterfinal and one semifinal appearance to show for their efforts till now. Meanwhile, the only nation to have won five World Cups won against the only Asian nation in the round of 32 with only seconds left. Gabriel Martinelli’s 96th-minute winner past Japanese goalkeeper Zion Suzuki was the latest goal ever recorded during regulation time in a World Cup knockout match.
The last-gasp win reflected the massive strides the Samurai Blues have made in recent decades, thanks in part to some Seleção legends. Football changed in Japan when Brazilian star Zico shifted halfway across the world to play for and then coach Sumitomo Metals, a J League club later renamed Kashima Antlers. Dunga, Leonardo and Hulk followed in his trail. Brazilian-born midfielder Alessandro Santos even became a citizen and played 82 matches for Japan. The only other occasion the two nations played each other in a World Cup match—in 2006, when Japan received a 4-1 spanking from Brazil in Dortmund—Zico was Japan’s coach. It was the Brazilian maestro who sowed the seeds of technical mastery that Japan used to beat the Seleção in a pre-World-Cup friendly and almost throttle Carlo Ancelotti’s side in Houston.
The two other results on Monday showed that this has been, till now, a World Cup of goalkeepers too. Paraguay’s Orlando Gill and Morocco’s Yassine Bounou kept their teams in play through 120 minutes and then past the penalty shootouts. The win led to such a celebration in Paraguay, a tiny country with a population one-third of Delhi’s, its government announced a national holiday on Tuesday. Ancelotti, one of the most successful coaches of the game, had prophesied before the tournament, “The perfect team won’t win the World Cup... a more resilient team will.” True to those words, Cape Verde’s Vozinha, Ghana’s Benjamin Asare and Curaçao’s Eloy Room kept up their last lines of defence and showed that it might just be possible to shake up football’s settled world order—one save at a time.
