Netherlands unbeaten, Japan without captain Endo in Group F opener

The final walk from tunnel to locker room framed the stakes before a ball was kicked. Japan entered its World Cup opener carrying the strain of Wataru Endo’s injury, while the Netherlands arrived with a veteran spine intact and the confidence of an unbeaten qualifying run, setting up a sharp contrast in mood and margin for error.

The Group F match at Dallas Stadium was played on June 14, 2026, with kickoff set for 15:00 in Dallas, 22:00 in Amsterdam and 05:00 on June 15 in Tokyo. It was Japan’s eighth straight World Cup, a run that has made Hajime Moriyasu’s side one of Asia’s most reliable tournament presences, and it was the first team outside the three host nations to book a place in the expanded 48-team field.

The Netherlands arrived with a different kind of weight. Ronald Koeman’s squad came in as a three-time World Cup finalist, still chasing the title that has eluded Dutch football, and it reached the tournament after finishing first in UEFA Group G with six wins and two draws. That record underlined a team built for control rather than survival, and its selection list reflected that confidence, with Virgil van Dijk, Frenkie de Jong and Memphis Depay all included after Depay recovered from a muscle injury.

History added another layer to the opener. Japan and the Netherlands had already met at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where Wesley Sneijder settled a tight match in Durban with a 1-0 win for the Dutch. The memory mattered because this was not a meeting between strangers, but a rematch between two sides that knew how little separated them when the margin was smallest.

Japan’s own tournament record showed why the opener carried such emotional weight. The team had reached the round of 16 in 2002, 2010, 2018 and 2022, but it stepped into this match without Endo, whose absence removed the captain and one of Moriyasu’s most important stabilizers in midfield. That loss sharpened the pressure on Japan in a group that also included Sweden and Tunisia, where every point could shape the path forward.

For FIFA, the matchup was the meeting of an Asian power and a European contender still trying to clear the final hurdle. In that tunnel-to-locker-room moment, Japan looked like a team defending its rise; the Netherlands looked like a side expecting to turn pedigree into something bigger.