{{Keisuke Honda scored twice for Japan as they beat Zambia 4-3 in a thrilling World Cup warmup in Tampa on Friday.}}<\/p>\n
Zambia equalised in the 89th minute thanks to a wonderful long-range strike from Lubambo Musonda but Yoshito Okubo grabbed a dramatic injury-time winner for Alberto Zaccheroni’s Brazil-bound side.<\/p>\n
The Africans took an early lead when Christopher Katongo headed in a bouncing cross at the back post in the ninth minute and then Nathan Sinkala made it 2-0 20 minutes later with a sweet strike after a short corner.<\/p>\n
Japan kept their cool, though, and were back in the game five minutes before the break through a Honda penalty after Emmanuel Mbola handled in the area.<\/p>\n
Shinji Kagawa brought Japan level in the 73rd minute, cutting in from the left and delivering a cross-shot which snuck in the far post.<\/p>\n
Two minutes later Japan were in front when Honda slid in to convert a low cross from Masato Morshige who had shown smart control and awareness to create space for himself and deliver a precise cross.<\/p>\n
Inside the final minute of normal time, Musondo scored a remarkable solo goal to make it 3-3, picking up the ball on the left flank, cutting inside and then unleashing a wonderful drive from 30 metres out that dipped just under the bar past a helpless Shusaku Nishikawa.<\/p>\n
But in injury time, Toshihiro Aoyama launched a long ball into the box and Okubo brought it down and fired home in one smooth movement for a beautiful winner.<\/p>\n
Japan will face Ivory Coast, Greece and Colombia in Group C in Brazil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Keisuke Honda scored twice for Japan as they beat Zambia 4-3 in a thrilling World Cup warmup in Tampa on Friday.}} Zambia equalised in the 89th minute thanks to a wonderful long-range strike from Lubambo Musonda but Yoshito Okubo grabbed a dramatic injury-time winner for Alberto Zaccheroni’s Brazil-bound side. The Africans took an early lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000052606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-14883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000052606,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14883.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000052606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14883"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=14883"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=14883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}