Victory means Japan will face Spain in the quarter-finals on Sunday, with the two sides having met in the final of the 2018 and 2022 editions.<\/p>\n
Japan, the 2018 champions were on the front foot from the get-go and after coming close on numerous occasions they finally went ahead in the 33rd minute.<\/p>\n
Rihona Ujihara surged down left touchline before setting up a cross that an onrushing Miyu Matsunaga nodded home completely unopposed at the back post.<\/p>\n
Rofiat Imuran had Nigeria\u2019s best chance shortly after as she forced a smart save from keeper Akane Okuma but it was the Asian powerhouse that went to the break with the lead, as they have done at every match at Colombia 2024.<\/p>\n
Maya Hijikata doubled the lead midway through the second half as she tucked home a cross from substitute Chinari Sasai at the back post; that goal taking her joint-top of the Golden Boot race, level with Brazil\u2019s Vendito.
\nOlushola Shobowale did manage to pull one back for Nigeria in stoppage time but they couldn\u2019t find a second as Japan hung on to close out the 2-1 win and set up that epic quarter-final clash with Spain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victory means Japan will face Spain in the quarter-finals on Sunday, with the two sides having met in the final of the 2018 and 2022 editions. Japan, the 2018 champions were on the front foot from the get-go and after coming close on numerous occasions they finally went ahead in the 33rd minute. Rihona Ujihara […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1019990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-1019989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-news","tag-afc","tag-afc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1019989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}