Asia’s World Cup may be over with Japan’s agonising elimination in a penalty shoot-out, but the Asian Football Confederation teams did enough to reaffirm the region’s growing stature.
Two out of four made the last 16, compared to just one out of five from Africa, and they did it in historical fashion with neither South Korea or Japan ever going beyond the group phase on foreign soil before.
Japan came into the tournament under a dark cloud after losing four games in a row, but they left with their dignity restored after beating Denmark 3-1 and Cameroon 1-0, and only narrowly losing 1-0 to the Netherlands.
It put them into the knockout rounds and they were unlucky to fall 5-3 on penalties to Paraguay on Tuesday after the game ended in a scoreless draw.
They awoke to headlines full of praise on Wednesday.
“Surprised the world; endured a gruelling 120 minutes,” the Asahi Shimbun said, while the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun declared that their “bravery will be remembered.”
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan hailed the side’s performance. “They showed the world the real strength of Japanese football by working as a team,” Kan said. “I applaud them for their brave battles.”
South Korea won similar plaudits for their exploits, which tempted millions of people onto the streets of Seoul and other major Korean cities to watch their games live on big screen televisions.
They came into the tournament among an elite group of just six nations to have qualified for seven World Cups in a row, along with Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Spain.
But unlike the rest, before South Africa they could only boast of one win on foreign soil — a 2-1 victory over Togo in 2006.
They added to that here with an opening 2-0 victory over Greece, before crashing 4-1 to Argentina and then drawing 2-2 with Nigeria.
But squandered chances saw them lose 2-1 to Uruguay to draw a curtain on their campaign. — AFP