England’s final home game before the World Cup ended in a disappointing defeat as they were beaten by Japan in a friendly at Wembley.<\/p>\n
Head coach Thomas Tuchel was without captain and all-time record goalscorer Harry Kane after he picked up a knock in training, and his worth was once again illustrated by England’s lack of threat.<\/p>\n
Brighton’s Kaoru Mitoma finished off a sweeping counter-attack in the 23rd minute to give Japan victory.<\/p>\n
Phil Foden was used in a false nine role, but the experiment did not come off as he lasted less than an hour in an unfamiliar role before being replaced by Dominic Solanke.<\/p>\n
Tuchel fielded a starting line-up with 10 changes from Friday’s draw against Uruguay, and how that showed in a performance that lacked cohesion and fluency.<\/p>\n
Japan had already threatened before they took the lead, Mitoma sending a precise finish past Jordan Pickford after Cole Palmer conceded possession in midfield.<\/p>\n
It was the first goal Pickford had conceded in 922 minutes after 10 successive clean sheets for England.<\/p>\n
Elliot Anderson was one of the few England players to impress, almost equalising with a curling shot that hit the bar.<\/p>\n
Japan were far superior, though, and it took a smart near-post save from Pickford to stop Ritsu Doan doubling their lead.<\/p>\n
Substitute Marcus Rashford did test Japan keeper Zion Suzuki with a low shot, while Harry Maguire had a header cleared off the line by Yukinari Sugawara as England applied some belated pressure, but it was to no avail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England’s final home game before the World Cup ended in a disappointing defeat as they were beaten by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-577047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}