It was a nerve-wracking climax to Group \u2018E\u2019 on Thursday night, with Spain going through despite losing to Japan, and Germany crashing out despite a 4-2 victory against Costa Rica.
\nCosta Rica had been under immense German pressure at the Al Bayt Stadium, but found their release two minutes before the hour-mark when Yeltsin Tejada, quickest to react after Manuel Neuer had parried away a header, made it 1-1.
\nIn a game where Frenc\u00adhwoman Stephanie Frappart became the first female referee to officiate a match at the men\u2019s World Cup, Costa Rican fans went into raptures when Juan Pablo Vargas\u2019 poked them into the lead in the 70th minute. But Germany, who had opened the scoring through Serge Gnabry\u2019s 10th-minute header, levelled matters immediately through Kai Havertz.
\nHavertz got another goal, steering in a cross from Gnabry with five minutes to go, and Niclas Fuellkrug made it 4-2 in the 89th, but Germany still needed Spain to find a leveller to stay in. That didn\u2019t happen, and Spain went through on goal difference, with Japan clinching the top spot after their 2-1 win over the Spaniards.
\nSpain had taken the lead through Alvaro Morata\u2019s 11th-minute header, but Japan turned the game on its head with two goals in three minutes; Ritsu Doan first firing them level in the 48th and then Ao Tanaka got the ball over the line to put them ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a nerve-wracking climax to Group \u2018E\u2019 on Thursday night, with Spain going through despite losing to Japan, and Germany crashing out despite a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3288,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}