“We are glad we won today but we are aiming for the final and we’d like to win the tournament,” said the former Kashima Antlers head coach. “During this match we had the possibly to score more goals but we didn’t manage to do that.

 

“But this experience will be good for us going into the next match.

 

“We only have a few days so, to be honest, there’s not much time to do anything. We just need to make more chances to score more. We need mentally to be calm and we need to think about the technical side too. We need to create more chances in the next game.”

Japan created a host of opportunities throughout the 90 minutes, with Kimura putting his side in front with a header in the 27th minute having earlier seen Ryotaro Araki hit the crossbar.

 

It took until the 65th minute for Kawasaki to double the lead with Kaito Suzuki also smacking a header against the frame of the goal in injury time.

 

While the result means the Japanese will feature in the quarter-finals, the UAE have no chance of progressing after losing for the second game in a row with coach Marcelo Broli admitting his team were second-best throughout the meeting at Jassim bin Hamad Stadium.

“Japan were the ones who deserved to win,” said Broli, whose team take on China PR on Monday. “We tried to counter their strengths, however their good preparations can be credited with the clear difference in the performance of both teams.

 

“Unfortunately we were unable to make it through this group stage to the next stage.

 

“Every team has its own characteristics, this is something we’re used to. Today’s result had to do with the preparations. Japan had better preparations than we did and the difference was very clear in today’s game.”