The World Cup continues to produce the unexpected. On a throbbingly hot afternoon in the low flat plains outside Dallas the Netherlands and Japan played out a high-grade, ultimately thrilling Group F game, Daichi Kamada scoring an 89th-minute equaliser to make it 2-2 just as the Dutch looked like taking an early hold on one of the tougher groups.
Sport does love to spring surprises. As the entire bib-clad Japanese bench emptied on to the pitch to celebrate Kamada’s deflected goal, as the Japan fans writhed and roared and fell over themselves in the stands, it was tempting to wonder if perhaps the unthinkable is happening.
There has been so much talk of tired players, format collapse and empty seats (the stadium was full here), a note of disaster-ism so committed you wondered at times if it was necessary to play the games at all. But football remains a strangely unbreakable product, no matter how energetically you might try.
There is a reason this thing stands unchallenged as both the world’s most gripping spectator sport and its most reliable macro-distraction, the dictator’s Neuralyzer box, there to erase all those unhappy feelings with a single flash of blinding light. And it does feel as though something else has been taking place across a spunky opening week. Maybe – whisper it – the World Cup is actually good.
This was a lovely spectacle from the start. The Dallas Stadium is a vast concrete spaceship dumped down off the freeway beyond the city limits. Inside, the swooping panelled glass roof gives it the feel of an outsized Victorian railway station, or a vast and humid mega-greenhouse, the kind of place a giant would grow his tomatoes.
At kick-off the base colours were beautiful, warm royal blue versus deep zingy classic orange. Japan have been an excellent World Cup team in recent times. It felt significant afterwards that their coach, Hajime Moriyasu, was asked about his evident disappointment at only taking what he still described as a “very meaningful point”.
“The Netherlands are a top-class international team,” he said. “Look at the Fifa rankings, there’s quite a difference. But we can look back at today’s match and learn from the Dutch and enhance our power.”
Here Japan set up with attacking midfielders in the wing-back spots and the defensive three Moriyasu has tended to use since Qatar. Ronald Koeman had hinted that Memphis Depay might be fit, but Donyell Malen started in the centre of attack.
And the Netherlands took the ball away early on. They really should have scored on three minutes as Malen produced a grappling turn and a powerful shot that was palmed away by Zion Suzuki. After that the game became a series of wary thrusts in between a steady holding pattern of carefully metered Dutch possession.
Japan had some neat, high-pressing flurries. Frenkie de Jong was measured and stately on the ball, a footballer who always seems to be playing inside his own demilitarised zone.
The hydration break arrived just as the game seemed as if it might start to congeal, although the day was enlivened at that point by the sudden appearance of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders on what is reportedly the world’s largest HD screen, the kind of spectacle the human brain struggles to process, literally a 150ft woman dancing with a pompon.
The Dutch began to press. With 34 minutes gone Malen saw a close-in header direct from a corner batted away at ankle level by Suzuki. Japan had their own best chance just before half-time, a nice combination down the right leading to a cross and shot just wide from Keito Nakamura. But at the break the Dutch were on 67% possession with twice as many passes, controlling the tempo and geometry of the game.
They took the lead five minutes into the second half, Virgil van Dijk producing a finely angled header that bounced in off the far post. At that point Japan looked flat, unable to sustain possession, trapped in their own half. But they found an immediate injection of urgency on the left flank, and it was from there that the equaliser came six minutes later. A smart fizzed combination of passes ended with Nakamura whipping a right-foot shot into the corner via a fine deflection off Jan Paul van Hecke.
The second hydration break took away Japan’s momentum. Given the stadium is air conditioned there was clearly no need for it, beyond the fact this is now advertising protocol. How much hydration does anyone need? How much money does football need? Here a cynical and unnecessary piece of tinkering materially shifted the flow of the game, purely so that someone could try to sell you some crisps.
The Netherlands surged back, finding pockets of space between the lines as Japan struggled to re-condense. Crysencio Summerville made it 2-1 on 64 minutes, taking the ball from Ryan Gravenberch, gliding inside and curling a lovely left-foot shot into the far corner.
Japan responded as they had to the first goal, forming a discussion circle in their own half even as the Dutch players were celebrating. The end was high drama, the equaliser created by a whipped left-wing corner.
Group F looks wide open, and surely destined for some kind of as-things-stand late drama come the final round of games. Plus Dallas has passed its own first test as a high-functioning soccer stadium. For those who prefer their World Cup a little more sullen and sedate: England are here next.
