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If there were a shift in world football power, it may look something like the impressive results from South Korea, Japan, Qatar and AustraliaDaichi Kamada’s late equaliser for Japan against the Netherlands on Sunday did not merely mean that the scoreline more accurately reflected the game. It also extended to four the unbeaten run of teams from the Asian confederation against Europe at this tournament. There is a degree of contingency to that record, and nobody should draw definitive conclusions from the first week of a World Cup, but equally if there were a shift in the power dynamics of world football, it might look a bit like this.The tone was set on day one with South Korea’s victory over Czech Republic. It perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anybody who saw their qualifying playoff semi-final against Ireland that the Czechs would be so ponderous and lumbering, a side that understood the value of dead balls and long throws and little else. But still, the ease with which South Korea passed their way around them was striking. If Son Heung-min had been the player he was three or four years ago, the Korean victory would have been far more emphatic.The other AFC win over Europe saw Australia beat Turkey. Again, nobody could really claim that this Turkey, who dragged their way to qualification with 1-0 wins over Romania and Kosovo in the Uefa playoffs, really represent the pride of Europe. Nor was there any great sense that they’d been outplayed by Australia. Rather, Turkey had 30 shots but came up against an inspired goalkeeper in Patrick Beach, who made eight saves. But still, Australia had a smart gameplan that worked, and it wasn’t quite the smash and grab the stats may make it appear.Qatar’s draw with Switzerland can be attributed less to clever strategy. They sat in, seemed content to keep the score down and got away with it as Switzerland wasted chance after chance. Even the goal Switzerland did score – via a first-half Breel Embolo penalty – was controversial, the semi-automated offside apparently breaking down at the key moment. Miro Muheim’s injury-time own goal gifted Qatar a point, but it was not one they had ever looked likely to achieve. Switzerland had 26 shots to Qatar’s six and, on another day, could have won by three or four. So, again, it would be hard to portray that as a victory that demonstrated any sort of Asian superiority.The really intriguing game was that draw between Japan and the Netherlands. Even without three key players in Kaoru Mitoma, Wataru Endo and Takumi Minamino, Japan are highly fancied and they showed exactly why. There have been two real heavyweight clashes so far in this World Cup: Brazil v Morocco and the Netherlands v Japan. Both finished level. In both, it was the up-and-coming side who probably shaded the game. And in both cases, the up-and-coming side seemed to be playing the style of football more usually associated with their opponents.Morocco played with a fluency and verve, confident in possession, a pleasing smoothness to their passing. Japan interchanged positions and, although they had only 40% possession, there was a purpose and precision to their attacks that was redolent of the Dutch at their best. But crucially, there was no sense of inferiority.That’s something the Japan coach, Hajime Moriyasu, has stressed over the past few months. He is worried that his side have a mental block about progressing further than the last 16 and has chosen to address it by speaking of his side as potential champions. That may be a psychological ploy to jolt his players through the last-16 barrier but equally, if the Netherlands are contenders, why not Japan?The left wing-back Keito Nakamura, who scored the first goal, was one of two Japan starters to achieve a 90% pass accuracy, along with the defender Hiroki Ito. Kamada was aggressive and intelligent in the centre of midfield. Junya Ito came off the bench to offer creative edge. The 23-year-old Zion Suzuki may live up to predictions that he will be the best ever Japanese keeper. If there was a slight disappointment, it was the centre-forward Ayase Ueda, who struggled to impose himself, but he showed at Feyenoord last season just how effective he can be.AFC teams have in the past perhaps been guilty of lacking belief against Uefa sides, but no longer. Japan celebrated the equaliser as any side that has snatched a draw should, but the disappointment when they fell behind was clear. First and second in this group play second and first in the Brazil, Morocco, Scotland, Haiti group. It’s an indication of how far both Morocco and Japan have come that it’s not at all clear that it would be easier to face them than Brazil or the Netherlands.Four games are nowhere near sufficient for grand sweeping statements, but perhaps the best Asian sides are drawing closer to Europe.This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.

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The World Cup continues to produce the unexpected. On a throbbingly hot afternoon in the low flat plains outside Dallas the Netherlands and Japan played out a high-grade, ultimately thrilling Group F game, Daichi Kamada scoring an 89th-minute equaliser to make it 2-2 just as the Dutch looked like taking an early hold on one of the tougher groups.Sport does love to spring surprises. As the entire bib-clad Japanese bench emptied on to the pitch to celebrate Kamada’s deflected goal, as the Japan fans writhed and roared and fell over themselves in the stands, it was tempting to wonder if perhaps the unthinkable is happening.There has been so much talk of tired players, format collapse and empty seats (the stadium was full here), a note of disaster-ism so committed you wondered at times if it was necessary to play the games at all. But football remains a strangely unbreakable product, no matter how energetically you might try.There is a reason this thing stands unchallenged as both the world’s most gripping spectator sport and its most reliable macro-distraction, the dictator’s Neuralyzer box, there to erase all those unhappy feelings with a single flash of blinding light. And it does feel as though something else has been taking place across a spunky opening week. Maybe – whisper it – the World Cup is actually good.This was a lovely spectacle from the start. The Dallas Stadium is a vast concrete spaceship dumped down off the freeway beyond the city limits. Inside, the swooping panelled glass roof gives it the feel of an outsized Victorian railway station, or a vast and humid mega-greenhouse, the kind of place a giant would grow his tomatoes.At kick-off the base colours were beautiful, warm royal blue versus deep zingy classic orange. Japan have been an excellent World Cup team in recent times. It felt significant afterwards that their coach, Hajime Moriyasu, was asked about his evident disappointment at only taking what he still described as a “very meaningful point”.“The Netherlands are a top-class international team,” he said. “Look at the Fifa rankings, there’s quite a difference. But we can look back at today’s match and learn from the Dutch and enhance our power.”Here Japan set up with attacking midfielders in the wing-back spots and the defensive three Moriyasu has tended to use since Qatar. Ronald Koeman had hinted that Memphis Depay might be fit, but Donyell Malen started in the centre of attack.And the Netherlands took the ball away early on. They really should have scored on three minutes as Malen produced a grappling turn and a powerful shot that was palmed away by Zion Suzuki. After that the game became a series of wary thrusts in between a steady holding pattern of carefully metered Dutch possession.Japan had some neat, high-pressing flurries. Frenkie de Jong was measured and stately on the ball, a footballer who always seems to be playing inside his own demilitarised zone.The hydration break arrived just as the game seemed as if it might start to congeal, although the day was enlivened at that point by the sudden appearance of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders on what is reportedly the world’s largest HD screen, the kind of spectacle the human brain struggles to process, literally a 150ft woman dancing with a pompon.The Dutch began to press. With 34 minutes gone Malen saw a close-in header direct from a corner batted away at ankle level by Suzuki. Japan had their own best chance just before half-time, a nice combination down the right leading to a cross and shot just wide from Keito Nakamura. But at the break the Dutch were on 67% possession with twice as many passes, controlling the tempo and geometry of the game.They took the lead five minutes into the second half, Virgil van Dijk producing a finely angled header that bounced in off the far post. At that point Japan looked flat, unable to sustain possession, trapped in their own half. But they found an immediate injection of urgency on the left flank, and it was from there that the equaliser came six minutes later. A smart fizzed combination of passes ended with Nakamura whipping a right-foot shot into the corner via a fine deflection off Jan Paul van Hecke.The second hydration break took away Japan’s momentum. Given the stadium is air conditioned there was clearly no need for it, beyond the fact this is now advertising protocol. How much hydration does anyone need? How much money does football need? Here a cynical and unnecessary piece of tinkering materially shifted the flow of the game, purely so that someone could try to sell you some crisps.The Netherlands surged back, finding pockets of space between the lines as Japan struggled to re-condense. Crysencio Summerville made it 2-1 on 64 minutes, taking the ball from Ryan Gravenberch, gliding inside and curling a lovely left-foot shot into the far corner.Japan responded as they had to the first goal, forming a discussion circle in their own half even as the Dutch players were celebrating. The end was high drama, the equaliser created by a whipped left-wing corner.Group F looks wide open, and surely destined for some kind of as-things-stand late drama come the final round of games. Plus Dallas has passed its own first test as a high-functioning soccer stadium. For those who prefer their World Cup a little more sullen and sedate: England are here next.

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Despite missing key players, Hajime Moriyasu’s side have built strength in depth to challenge the traditional orderIn 2002 there was a sense that Japan had slightly missed an opportunity. South Korea may have enjoyed the benefit of some favourable refereeing, but they also impressed. They were quick, technically good and tactically extremely flexible and they progressed to the semi-final of their home World Cup.Japan did not do much wrong, topping their group before going down 1-0 to Turkey in the last 16, but the contrast with their co-hosts was inevitably underwhelming.Although Park Ji-sung and Lee Young-pyo earned moves to PSV off the back of South Korea’s performances, and subsequently joined Manchester United and Tottenham respectively, Japan already had four players with European clubs, although one of them, Junichi Inamoto, had briefly returned to Gamba Osaka from his loan at Arsenal before leaving for Fulham. He never played a league game for Arsène Wenger, his next permanent move taking him to West Brom, where he struggled to make an impact.The poor Japanese journalist whose job it was to cover him became a great figure of sympathy. The final question of each of Bryan Robson’s pre-match press conferences would always be him asking politely about Inamoto’s progress in training – at least until the moment, after almost two years, when he finally snapped and demanded, with despairing incredulity: “Mr Robson, why do you pick Darren Carter?”The unspoken question for Japan was always: why? Why could South Korea have outstripped them like that? South Korea’s first attempt at a professional league, staged in 1983, had comprised largely sides representing corporations and banks, and was won by Hallelujah, a club run by evangelical Christians. It had only had a truly professional national league from 1996, by which time the glitzy JLeague, with foreign stars such as Gary Lineker, Ramón Díaz and Zico, had been running for three years.In the past two decades Japanese and South Korean players have become increasingly familiar in European leagues, but Japan are still to make it beyond the last 16 of a World Cup, something their manager, Hajime Moriyasu, has admitted has become a mental block. In 2010, after outplaying Cameroon and Denmark in the group, they allowed themselves to be dragged into a stalemate of ferocious tedium by Paraguay, losing on penalties. They tossed away a two-goal lead against Belgium at that stage in 2018 and then, in 2022, having beaten Spain and Germany in the group, ran into Croatia with predictable consequences.But this year, perhaps, is different. As Japan start their World Cup campaign against the Netherlands in Arlington on Sunday, it feels genuinely possible that they are not merely the best Japan side in history, but the best Asian side to play at a World Cup. Moriyasu has been in the job since 2018 and, as such, is the longest-serving Japan national manager ever. He has been bullish about Japan’s chances, talking openly of winning the competition.Japan won six out of six in the first round of qualifying and then seven out of 10 in the second, losing just once, a remarkable achievement given the distances involved and the huge variety of opponents and conditions. But being the best in Asia is no longer enough, and a run of six successive friendly wins since, including over England and Brazil, is arguably even more important than qualifying with three games to spare, for reasons of self-belief if nothing else.Injuries have hit them hard. The captain Wataru Endo withdrew from the squad this week, while the loss of Kaoru Mitoma to a hamstring injury sustained playing for Brighton against Wolves in May is a major blow, particularly with Takumi Minamino rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament. It says much about the development of Japanese football, though, that their absences are not seen as terminal. That Minamino has travelled with the squad to offer moral support suggests their togetherness.Mitoma is a loss not only because of his quality but also his versatility. He could play either as one of two creators in Moriyasu’s 3-4-2-1, or at left wing-back. Keito Nakamura looks all but certain to operate wide on the left, but there are various options to play off the Feyenoord centre-forward Ayase Ueda. Takefusa Kubo was regarded as the rising star of Japanese football when he joined Barcelona’s la Masia academy at the age of 10 and signed for Real Madrid at 18. Now 25, he has settled at Real Sociedad and will probably be the right-sided creator. The role on the left, though, could go to Celtic’s Daizen Maeda or Genk’s Junya Ito, or potentially a more defensive figure such as Daichi Kamada of Crystal Palace. The depth of options is itself an indication of Japan’s development.The group is not easy to read. The Netherlands, given a midfield that should be able to hold possession and a hugely varied forward line (they have heft in Wout Weghorst and Brian Brobbey, but also pace and subtlety in Memphis Depay, Donyell Malen, Crysencio Summerville and Noa Lang) but they have been ravaged by injuries and fatigue.Sweden were awful in qualifying but have been re-energised by an improbable messiah in Graham Potter. Tunisia exist in a state of constant paranoia and overcaution, but the appointment of Sabri Lamouchi and a much-changed squad might at least remove some gloomy memories from a miserable Cup of Nations campaign six months ago.The group winners and runners-up face the runners-up and winners from the Brazil, Morocco, Haiti and Scotland group, which is far from straightforward. The draw could have been a lot kinder, but hope remains, with Endo this week talking of a quarter-final as a first goal.In 1992, just before the launch of the J League, Japan announced a plan to win the World Cup by 2092. In 2005, after two appearances, they brought that target forward to 2050. For a side that has never got beyond the last 16 to speak of victory may feel premature, but there is little doubt that, at this moment, Japan have surpassed South Korea. And while Senegal and Morocco are clear contenders, if there is to be a winner from outside Europe and South America, Japan look as well placed as anybody.