The Asian Cup has reached its last-16 stage, and two of the teams looking to book their place in the quarter-finals of the competition are Bahrain and Japan, who meet on Wednesday morning.
Bahrain was the surprise package of Group E, as they finished top of the standings, having won two of their three group games.
They kicked off the group stages with a 3-1 defeat against one of the tournament favourites, South Korea. However, they bounced back by recording 1-0 wins over Malaysia and Japan to seal their place in the competition's knockout stages.
The back-to-back wins continued a decent run of form for Bahrain in the Asian Cup, as they have now won three of their last five games in the competition while suffering just one defeat over 90 minutes in the run.
The Samurai Blue were expected to dominate Group D. However, Hajime Moriyasu’s team finished second place in the standings, three points behind Group D’s surprise package Iraq.
Japan recorded comfortable victories over Vietnam and Indonesia but suffered a shock 2-1 defeat against Iraq.
The defeat was rare, as Japan has won 12 of their last 13 international games. They have also been highly prolific lately, scoring at least two goals in all 12 recent victories.
Japan’s recent record at the Asian Cup is a stellar one, as they have won eight of their last ten games in the competition. Apart from the Iraq loss, their only defeat in the ten-game run was against Qatar in the 2019 final.
Forebet predicts that Japan will record a comfortable victory in a high-scoring encounter to book their place in the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup.