Japan Twice Pull Back to Draw 2-2 With the Netherlands

Japan would not stay beaten. Twice behind against the Netherlands, the Samurai Blue twice clawed level, and Daichi Kamada’s goal a minute from time earned a 2-2 draw that felt like a win in Dallas on Sunday.

Virgil van Dijk had headed the Dutch in front early in the second half, meeting Ryan Gravenberch’s cross in the 51st minute. Keito Nakamura levelled six minutes later, taking Takefusa Kubo’s pass and firing low through a ricochet. When Crysencio Summerville cut inside and curled Ronald Koeman’s side back ahead on 64 minutes, the Netherlands looked set to open their World Cup with three points.

Japan had other plans. Pressing in front of 69,285 at the AT&T Stadium, they got their leveller with the clock running down: Koki Ogawa rose to a header that deflected off Kamada and past goalkeeper Zion Suzuki at the death. It was the kind of late, scrappy, deserved goal that defines a group stage.

For the Dutch, it was two points dropped and a familiar question reopened: a squad full of talent that does not always shut games down. For Japan, among the most assured sides Asia has sent to a World Cup, it was proof of the resilience that makes them so awkward to beat, recovering twice against one of the tournament’s contenders.

It was another opener that refused to follow the script, in a tournament where Germany’s seven-goal rout has sat alongside Brazil’s stumble and now a Dutch side held by Japan’s refusal to lose. Group F has a long way to run, and on this evidence it will not lack for drama.

The draw shapes a tense group. The Netherlands, regular contenders, now cannot afford to drop more points, while Japan, increasingly a fixture in the World Cup’s later stages, will back themselves to go through if they keep finding comebacks like this one. A single point apiece, at the start of a 48-team tournament with a widened path to the knockouts, settles very little, and Koeman will know his side controlled long stretches without killing the game off.