Could Asian teams be catching up to Europe at this World Cup? | Jonathan Wilson

If there were a shift in world football power, it may look something like the impressive results from South Korea, Japan, Qatar and Australia

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Daichi Kamada’s late equaliser for Japan against the Netherlands on Sunday did not merely mean that the scoreline more accurately reflected the game. It also extended to four the unbeaten run of teams from the Asian confederation against Europe at this tournament. There is a degree of contingency to that record, and nobody should draw definitive conclusions from the first week of a World Cup, but equally if there were a shift in the power dynamics of world football, it might look a bit like this.

The tone was set on day one with South Korea’s victory over Czech Republic. It perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anybody who saw their qualifying playoff semi-final against Ireland that the Czechs would be so ponderous and lumbering, a side that understood the value of dead balls and long throws and little else. But still, the ease with which South Korea passed their way around them was striking. If Son Heung-min had been the player he was three or four years ago, the Korean victory would have been far more emphatic.

This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.

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