Photo credit: FIFA via Getty Images
Japan put on a masterclass to defeat New Zealand 7-0 in the Oceania side’s opening FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup 2024 game.
It was an utterly dominant performance from the 2018 winners and 2022 runners up, who over the 90 minutes had a total of 30 shots on goal to New Zealand’s two, and completed 552 passes to New Zealand’s 189.
Maya Hijikata opened the scoring in the 16th minute, and from that point on it was essentially one-way traffic.
“We’re quite disappointed,” said New Zealand captain Manaia Elliott after the match.
“Credit to Japan, they outclassed us today,”
“We’ll have to bounce back from there.”
New Zealand head coach Leon Birnie was similarly disappointed.
“Japan have medalled in the last three Under-20 World Cups and that looks like an impressive Japanese side. Even when we got players where we needed to have them, they were still able to play through us. We just got completely outplayed on the park.
“Don’t define this group or judge this group off that performance. We’ve had three games coming in – two against Australia and one against Canada – and three good performances there, and tonight we were off the pace.”
He backed his players to bounce back for the games against Austria and Ghana.
“We were always targetting the next two games, so for us now we have to puck the girls up, regroup and this will show our true character. If the girls can move on from this, stay connected and stay together then I think you’ll see a much better performance.”
Japan: 7 (Maya HIJIKATA, 16’, 38’; Chinari SASAI, 41’, 90+1’; Aemu OYAMA 45’; Shinomi KOYAMA 60’; Miku HAYAMA 75’)
New Zealand: 0
HT: 4-0