No matter what level you play football at, we’re all at the end of a hiding place.
Still, it’s hard to imagine what kind of pain Mongolia must have felt on Tuesday after suffering a 14-0 thump in the hands of Japan in a real World Cup qualifier.
It just looks weird, right? | Kaz Photography / Getty Images
When you entered the game, you would have been angry to beat Samurai Blue, who put Liverpool loanee Takumi Minamino, Eintracht Frankfurt’s Daichi Kamada and former Southampton defender Maya Yoshida in their first XI. Mongolia is currently ranked 190th in the world, below Djibouti, Vanuatu and Fiji.
The Underdogs did not get off to the best start, with Minamino giving his team the lead within 13 minutes. This was just the beginning as well, with four more goals coming before halftime.
After the break, it started to get silly. After holding on bravely for ten minutes, Yuya Osaka scored the second of his three goals to make it 6-0. This strike fired the starting gun for a target bonanza and with 90 minutes on the clock, Japan led 11-0. Not content with holding on to the lead, the visitors continued to add three more strikes in the second half stoppage time.
14 – Japan’s 14-0 victory over Mongolia is their second biggest victory in history, just behind a 15-0 victory over the Philippines in 1967. Historically. pic.twitter.com/8Kmh5P069t
– OptaJiro (@OptaJiro) March 30, 2021
The match statistics were not surprisingly as one-sided as the result line, where Mongolia had only 20% possession, two goal attempts and 196 passes. Japan, on the other hand, forced opposition goalkeeper Enkhtaivan Munkherdene to 11 saves and had a total of 34 shots.
The victory continued Japan’s undefeated start in the World Cup qualifiers and also increased their goal difference to an impressive 27 after just five matches. If they go into their remaining matches in the same ruthless way, you can be pretty sure they will qualify for their seventh World Cup in a row next summer.
