East Asian Championship: China lose to Japan, face Hong Kong wooden spoon fight
Mao Hosoya blasts Japan in front after 11 minutes, before Chinese fate sealed by second-half Henry Heroki Mochizuki strike
Japan set up a final-day East Asian Football Championship title shoot-out with South Korea, after they beat China 2-0 in Seoul on Saturday.
In a mirror image of the past two editions, in 2019 and 2022, Hong Kong will fight the Chinese to avoid the ignominy of claiming the tournament’s wooden spoon.
And while hopes have been high of a first Hong Kong victory in 40 years, China were more organised, aggressive and ambitious against Japan than in their 3-0 loss to the Koreans five days earlier.
Six minutes after they fell behind to Mao Hosoya’s early strike, China had a golden chance to level. A slightly fortunate ricochet off his own boot sent Zhang Yuning clean through, but the striker’s low shot was too close to Tomoki Hayakawa in goal. Wei Shihao tamely side-footed the rebound wide.
Japan had made no such mistake when their chance fell, and after Gao Tianyi lost possession in midfield, early in the 11th minute, the next China player to touch the ball was goalkeeper Yan Junling, when he picked it out of his net roughly 40 seconds later.
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Satoshi Tanaka rattled the final pass into Hosoya, who had his back to goal on the edge of the area. The centre-forward turned and escaped debutant China defender Liu Haofan in one movement, before unleashing a full-blooded shot across Yan and into the left corner.