Japan managed to turn around a poor run of form leading into the World Cup finals to be one of the best-performed teams in the competition.

The Blue Samurai were one poor penalty kick off making it to the quarter finals after earlier being tipped to finish bottom of Group E.

Led by Keisuke Honda and Yasuhito Endo, Japan were dangerous in attack whilst Marcus Tulio Tanaka led a stoic defence which gave nothing away.

The Asian nation can take heart after this performance which showed that the Japanese team can fight back when forced into a corner and this performance will surely have them as early faviourites for the Asian Cup in Qatar in January 2011.

Finished: 9th Record: Wins - 2; Draws - 0; Losses - 2; Points - 6 Matches: Cameroon (1-0), Holland (0-1), Denmark (3-1), RO16-Paraguay (0p-0) Goals: 4 Against: 2

tribalfootball.com's Star ManKeisuke Honda (Led the frontline with aplomb and became a household name along the way)

Official statistics

Minutes playedKeisuke Honda 390 Yuji Nakazawa 390 Eiji Kawashima 390 Marcus Tulio Tanaka 390 Yuto Nagatomo 390 Yuichi Komano 390 Yasuhito Endo 389

Top scorersKeisuke Honda 2 Shinji Okazaki 1 Yasuhito Endo 1

Total shotsKeisuke Honda 9 Yoshito Okubo 6 Daisuke Matsui 5 Shinji Okazaki 5

Pass Completion RateYuki Abe 70% Yasuhito Endo 69% Yuichi Komano 68% Yuji Nakazawa 63%

Most FoulsKeisuke Honda 19 Daisuke Matsui 9 Yoshito Okubo 8 Yuto Nagatomo 7

Yellow cardsYasuhito Endo 2 Yuto Nagatomo 2 Yuki Abe 1 Daisuke Matsui 1 Keisuke Honda 1

Red cards none

SavesEiji Kawashima 17