Sunday June 9th, 2002
 Japan vs  Russia in Yokohama
(1:0)
The Japanese fans were thrilled with their team's early attacking
play, even if Inamoto's shot was way off target.
Japan continued to string fast, attacking moves together but their
finishing let them down and the larger, more experienced Russians cleared up comfortably.
Russian could have had a penalty when Igor Semshov was clattered by
Kazuyuki Toda, six minutes before the break.
Half-time: Japan 0 - Russia 0
Dmitry Sychev started the second half, in place of Rusian Pimenov, as Russia tried to look
more threatening in front of goal.
1:0
Junichi Inamoto beat the offside trap in the Russian area to put Japan in the lead, for
the first time in a World Cup finals game - 51 mins.
Russia brought on Vladimir Beschastnykh in place of Alexei Smertin to add more firepower
to the attack and he came close within a minute.
Japan continued to have a number of chances but had trouble getting
over the ball and sent shot after shot high over the bar.
Hidetoshi Nakata could have sealed the game for Japan, twenty minutes
from time, but again his shot was a riser...... at least it hit the crossbar though.
Japan pulled all their men back for the last ten minutes as they
sought to preserve their lead and notch up their first World Cup finals victory.
Final Score:
Japan
1 -
Russia 0
Man of the Match:
Junichi Inamoto - Worked very hard for the team and scored the only goal of the game; his
second of the tournament.
 Yellow Cards:
Rusian Pimenov (13 mins)
Tsuneyasu Miyamoto (16 mins)
Andrei Solomatin (38 mins)
Koji Nakata (41 mins)
Yuri Nikiforov (60 mins)
Masashi Nakayama (91 mins)
The Teams
Japan:
12 Seigo Narazaki; 3 Naoki Matsuda, 17 Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, 16 Koji Nakata; 5 Junichi
Inamoto (15 Takashi Fukunishi - 85 mins), 20 Tomokazu Myojin, 7 Hidetoshi Nakata, 18
Shinji Ono (6 Toshihiro Hattori - 75 mins), 21 Kazuyuki Toda; 11 Takayuki Suzuki (10
Masashi Nakayama - 72 mins), 13 Atsushi Yanagisawa.
Russia:
1 Rusian Nigmatullin; 2 Yuri Kovtun, 3 Yuri Nikiforov, 7 Viktor Onopko, 5 Andrei
Solomatin; 20 Marat Izmailov (21 Dmitri Khokhlov - 52 mins), 8 Valeri Karpin, 6 Igor
Semshov, 4 Alexei Smertin (11 Vladimir Beschastnykh - 57 mins), 9 Yegor Titov; 19 Rusian
Pimenov (22 Dmitry Sychev - 46 mins).
Referee: Markus Merk 
In Korea
Group A
 Denmark,  France,  Senegal,  Uruguay.
Group B
 Paraguay,  Slovenia,  Spain, 
South Africa.
Group C
 Brazil,  China,  Costa Rica,  Turkey.
Group D
 Poland,  Portugal, 
South Korea,  United States.
Korea First Round Matches.
In Japan
Group E
 Cameroon, Germany,  Republic of Ireland, 
Saudi Arabia.
Group F
 Argentina,  England,  Nigeria,  Sweden.
Group G
 Croatia,  Ecuador,  Italy,  Mexico.
Group H
 Belgium, Japan, Russia,  Tunisia.
Japan First Round Matches.
2002 World Cup Finals - Knockout Stage.
Group Tables -
Leading Goalscorers.
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