TOKYO – Japan attacker Kaoru Mitoma is unlikely to recover from a left-leg injury in time for the World Cup, a source close to the matter said Wednesday, in a major setback for the Samurai Blue less than a month before the tournament begins.<\/p>\n
The Brighton star limped off with what appeared to be a hamstring injury during their home win over Wolverhampton in the English Premier League on Saturday, his last match before Japan manager Hajime Moriyasu announces his World Cup squad on Friday.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Mitoma had been expected to play a key role for Moriyasu’s men this summer, displaying his clinical finishing for his national team as recently as in late March when he swept home the winner in a 1-0 friendly victory over England at Wembley Stadium.<\/p>\n
Moriyasu said on Sunday it “does not look like a light injury” when speaking about Mitoma’s setback.<\/p>\n
Mitoma helped Japan reach the last 16 of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where he set up his childhood friend Ao Tanaka’s winner against Spain by keeping the ball in play by a matter of millimeters.<\/p>\n
This summer, Japan face the Netherlands on June 14 before taking on Tunisia and Sweden in Group F.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO – Japan attacker Kaoru Mitoma is unlikely to recover from a left-leg injury in time for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-668289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668289","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=668289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}