The North Korean women's soccer team, ranked ninth in the world women's soccer rankings, will face the eighth-ranked Japanese women's soccer team at home in the first round of the third stage of the Olympic women's soccer qualifying tournament. If after two matches, the leader will get the ticket to the main round of the Olympics in Paris.
Before the match, the DPRK women's soccer team had won five consecutive matches against strong opponents without conceding a goal and scored 59 goals in total, which is a stunning performance. The Japanese women's soccer team has been a little less impressive lately, with one win and one loss in their last two matches. However, in the past two matches between the two sides, the Japanese women's soccer team has won, which makes more than half of the fans favor the Japanese women's soccer team to beat North Korea on the road.
However, when the game started, the visiting Japanese women's soccer team failed to break the deadlock and was heavily defended by the DPRK. Despite having a slight advantage in ball possession, the Japanese women's soccer team seemed to shy away on the offensive end, taking far fewer shots than the DPRK. This phenomenon seems to indicate that the Japanese team prefers to solve problems on their home court. This also confirms that the DPRK women's soccer team is not an easy team to defeat.
