Martinelli injury time winner sees Brazil past Japan

Gabriel Mar­tinel­li scored the win­ning goal late in in­jury time to give five-time cham­pi­on Brazil a 2-1 win over Japan in the round of 32 at the World Cup on Mon­day.

Mar­tinel­li, who had come on as a sec­ond-half sub­sti­tute, scored in the sixth minute of stop­page time as the match ap­peared to be head­ed to ex­tra time.

Brazil will next face ei­ther the Ivory Coast or Nor­way on Sun­day in East Ruther­ford, New Jer­sey, in the round of 16.

Casemiro had ear­li­er equal­ized on a head­er in the 56th minute off an as­sist from Gabriel Ma­g­a­l­hães af­ter just miss­ing an­oth­er chance two min­utes ear­li­er. The shot sailed just out of reach of the out­stretched hand of Japan goal­keep­er Zion Suzu­ki and in­to the net.

Kaishu Sano stole a mis­placed pass at mid­field and took it down the field be­fore a right-foot­ed shot from above the half cir­cle put Japan ahead in the 29th minute.

Viní­cius Júnior, who has scored four goals so far in this year’s tour­na­ment, had a chance to put Brazil on top in the 58th minute but his shot from the left box was de­flect­ed by Suzu­ki and went off the far post.

Casemiro left in the first minute of sec­ond-half stop­page time with what ap­peared to be a leg in­jury.

Brazil had two chances to even the score ear­ly in the sec­ond half be­fore break­ing through. On the first one, Suzu­ki blocked a head­er from Bruno Guimarães in the 52nd minute. Soon af­ter, Casemiro’s head­er bounced off a de­fend­er’s head and Suzu­ki’s face. Suzu­ki fin­ished with four saves.

Japan has nev­er won a knock­out match at the World Cup.

The won was Brazil’s 12th in 15 games against Japan. The teams have al­so played to two draws while Japan got its first win in the se­ries in a friend­ly in Tokyo in Oc­to­ber.

This was a matchup be­tween two coun­tries with deep ties, with Brazil be­ing home to about 2.7 mil­lion Japan­ese de­scen­dants, which is the largest Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion out­side of Japan.

Those ties ex­tend to soc­cer where Brazil su­per­star Zi­co moved to Japan in 1991 to play for Kashima Antlers and help build Japan’s pro­fes­sion­al soc­cer net­work. He coached the Japan na­tion­al team from 2002-06, lead­ing the team to the World Cup in 2006.

That team lost to Brazil 4-1 in the on­ly pre­vi­ous meet­ing be­tween the teams at the World Cup.

Brazil won Group C af­ter a draw with Mo­roc­co and vic­to­ries over Haiti and Scot­land. Mon­day’s vic­to­ry came on the an­niver­sary of their first World Cup cham­pi­onship in Swe­den in 1958, when a 17-year-old Pele scored two goals in the fi­nal against the host coun­try.

Japan reached the round of 32 as run­ner-up in Group F af­ter a draws with the Nether­lands and Swe­den and a win over Tunisia. The loss snaps a 10-game un­beat­en streak dat­ing back to a 2-0 loss to the Unit­ed States in Sep­tem­ber.

By KRISTIE RIEKEN

HOUS­TON (AP)