Globalisation has redefined international sports, yet some of the results of these changes still surprise us.For example, consider the latest World Cup clash between the Netherlands and Japan, which ended in a 2-2 draw.In this Group F match played in Arlington, USA, an unusual situation occurred: both Dutch top-division players in the starting XI were actually Japanese.##NAJAVA_MECA_9795050##0/2 – The Netherlands are starting a World Cup match without a player from the Dutch Eredivisie for the first time ever, while opponents Japan are fielding two players from the Dutch league in their starting XI. (Un)familiar. pic.twitter.com/33XqnwSA86— OptaJohan (@OptaJohan) June 14, 2026 Ayase Ueda and Tsuyoshi Watanabe of Feyenoord started the match, while the Oranje's squad had no players from their domestic league. Moreover, Ronald Koeman's 26-man squad has just two Eredivisie men – Wout Weghorst of Ajax Amsterdam and Guus Til of PSV Eindhoven. On the other hand, the Samurai Blue boss Hajime Moriyasu had three Dutch league substitutions on his list: ex-Arsenal player Takehiro Tomiyasu (Ajax), Ko Itakura (Ajax) and Koki Ogawa (NEC Nijmegen).A "never say die" attitude saves Japan from defeatCuracao has called up the most Eredivisie players (8), followed by Japan (5), while Algeria, Australia, Croatia, Morocco, the Netherlands, and the United States all called up two Dutch-based players.Japan’s manager Hajime Moriyasu let his players know how long was left in their game against Netherlands with a whiteboard and massive numbers…Securing their 2-2 draw against them, it seemingly worked well 😅 pic.twitter.com/BOipkN20AF— george (@StokeyyG2) June 15, 2026
107