Heartbroken Japanese football fans stayed behind to clean up a Russian football stadium… despite being knocked out of the World Cup by Belgium.
Touching images showed fans picking up litter and tidying it into blue bin bags just minutes after the county’s team suffered a 3-2 defeat in Rostov-on-Don.
But goals from Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen and Manchester United’s Marouane Fellaini kept Belgian hopes alive, before Nacer Chadli’s last-minute winner sent the crowd wild.
Japan squeezed through to the knockout stage of this World Cup with a better disciplinary record than Senegal after both teams finished the group phase with four points, the same goal difference and the same number of goals scored.
It was the third time Japan has failed to make the last eight in the World Cup and maybe the closest it came to succeeding.
Some of the players fell to their knees in despair after the final whistle while others broke down in tears.
“We started off very well, but at the end, right at the end, to have conceded a goal like that, it was not expected,†coach Akira Nishino told reporters.
“We were leading and we were going to win, but I didn’t expect this reversal of the result. It was the World Cup, and we were faced with the depth and the strength of Belgium. That’s how I felt at the end of the game.â€
Source: Daily Mail UK
