A place at the next football World Cup is not all that is at stake when Japan and North Korea meet on Thursday for the first of two qualifying matches, in a resumption of one of the fiercest rivalries in international football.
Despite the huge gap between the countries’ economies and the profiles of their domestic leagues, few expect the match at Tokyo’s national stadium to be a walkover for the Japanese, who are 18th in the Fifa rankings, 96 places above their opponents.
