Japan

Japan arrive in North America as something they have never been before: a team with a credible quarter-final ambition. The 2022 World Cup proved their tactical model — sit deep against elite sides, break vertically in three or four passes — could deliver real results, not just symbolic ones. They beat Germany 2-1. They beat Spain 2-1. They lost on penalties to Croatia in the Round of 16. Four years later the squad is older, hardened, and almost entirely drawn from top-five European leagues. They were the first nation in the world to qualify for the 2026 tournament, sealing it in March 2025 with games to spare. Group F’s draw — Netherlands as the clear favourite, Sweden and Tunisia both rated below them on paper — is the best Japan have had at a World Cup since 2002.

The Mitoma injury, suffered ten days before the squad announcement, is the bruise on an otherwise excellent campaign. The Brighton winger was Japan’s only proven 1v1 dribbler; without him, Moriyasu has reshaped the attack around Kubo cutting inside from the right, Doan stretching the pitch on dead balls, and either Maeda or new call-up Goto running the channels. The compensation works on paper but removes the one player who could have changed a tight game on his own. Tunisia, who held Japan to a 0-0 friendly four years ago and project as the hardest team to break down in the group, are the matchup Mitoma would have most influenced.

Path to the quarter-final: beat Tunisia in matchday two (the must-win), draw with one of Netherlands or Sweden, finish second in the group, and run into a Group C runner-up — likely Morocco or Mexico — in the Round of 16. Both of those matches Japan are capable of winning. The quarter-final would then be against a Group E winner or a Group H runner-up, where the bracket gets harder fast. The ceiling is a semi-final and a country-changing run. The floor is a third or fourth-place group finish and an eighth-straight World Cup without a knockout-round win that did not require penalties. Moriyasu has not said it out loud, but a Round of 16 exit would likely cost him the job after eight years, and the JFA’s preferred successor (Akira Nishino, or potentially a foreign appointment) has been an open secret in Tokyo since the AFC Asian Cup loss in 2023.

Japan walk into the 2026 World Cup as something they have never been before: a team with realistic quarter-final ambition. The 2022 group stage in Qatar — where they beat Germany 2-1, Spain 2-1, and lost only by one goal in extra-time penalties to Croatia in the Round of 16 — was no longer a fluke by the time Asian qualifying ended. They became, in March 2025, the first team in the world to qualify for the 2026 tournament. They did it without conceding more than once in any match in the third round. The shape (a 3-4-2-1 that becomes a 5-4-1 out of possession), the personnel (a starting eleven now drawn entirely from top-five European leagues bar one), and the calm in Moriyasu’s eighth year are all where they need to be.

The blow came in early May: Kaoru Mitoma, the Brighton winger who had been Japan’s most productive 1v1 attacker for three years, sustained a season-ending injury just before the squad announcement. Moriyasu called it “a huge blow” and he was not exaggerating — Mitoma was the only player in the squad capable of solving a low-block one-on-one, the exact problem Tunisia will present. The compensation strategy is Kubo cutting inside from the right, Doan stretching the pitch on dead balls and quick switches, and either Daizen Maeda or new call-up Keisuke Goto running the channels. Crystal Palace’s Daichi Kamada becomes a more central figure than Moriyasu had originally planned.

Group F looks favourable on paper for the first time in Japan’s World Cup history. Netherlands first up is unusually tough as openers go — Dallas in mid-June will be hot, and Koeman’s high line is the kind of structural quirk Moriyasu’s vertical transitions thrive against (the same pattern that beat Germany in 2022). Tunisia in the second matchday is the must-win, a game Japan should dominate possession in but where they failed to score against the same opponent at Qatar 2022 — a 0-0 friendly result that does not fill the squad with confidence. Sweden in the final group game projects as a six-pointer for second place if results go to script.

Historically, Japan have been to every World Cup since 1998 (eight in a row, 2026 inclusive), reached the Round of 16 four times (2002, 2010, 2018, 2022), and never gone further. Moriyasu has stated the goal openly: a top-eight finish would change Japanese football. The squad finally looks like a top-eight squad.

Ceiling: quarter-final, possibly semi-final if the bracket cracks open. Floor: a familiar Round of 16 loss to a top-five European nation. Most likely: a first-ever World Cup quarter-final.

Hajime Moriyasu was born on August 23, 1968 in Nagasaki, played his entire club career either at or out of Sanfrecce Hiroshima, and has now been the Japan head coach since July 2018 — making this his second World Cup cycle in the role and his longest sustained period of authority in Japanese football history. He is 57, soft-spoken, and runs a regimen that prizes shape, discipline and pre-rehearsed pattern over individual freedom. The players call him a tactician’s tactician.

As a player he was an unspectacular defensive midfielder who won 35 caps for Japan and represented his country at the 1992 AFC Asian Cup. The 14 years at Sanfrecce gave him both the club’s institutional knowledge and the relationships that would later define his coaching career. He was Mihailo Petrović’s assistant at Sanfrecce from 2004 to 2011 and inherited the head job in 2012; he immediately won the J1 League title, then defended it in 2013, then won a third with the same squad in 2015. He left in 2017 after a slow start, was named the U-23 / Olympic head coach, and then in 2018 took the senior job — the unusual ascent of a coach who has only ever worked inside the Japanese football system.

His 2022 World Cup in Qatar made his reputation. Japan beat Germany 2-1 and Spain 2-1 in the same group stage, became the only team to do that, and then lost on penalties to Croatia in the Round of 16. The signature pattern — concede the ball, defend the box deeply, then break vertically through three or four passes at maximum speed — is now the textbook approach for outsized opponents at the World Cup. The 3-4-2-1 he uses against top opposition is his trademark shape; against weaker teams he goes to a 4-2-3-1 and asks his full-backs to push aggressively.

The May 2026 squad announcement was complicated by Mitoma’s injury, which removed his most reliable 1v1 winger and forced a shift in attacking design. Moriyasu opted against an emergency call-up and instead reshaped the front line around Kubo cutting inside from the right. The selection of Tomiyasu — barely a club regular for two years — and three goalkeepers without major-league pedigree drew some criticism. But the spine of the side is solid (Suzuki, Itakura, Ito, Endo, Kubo, Doan, Ueda), the team is rested, and Moriyasu has been preparing for the Netherlands opener since the draw was made in December 2025. A Round of 16 result is the floor; a quarter-final is the upside that would redefine Japanese football and likely earn him a contract extension that nobody saw coming three years ago.