Mohamed Ali Ben Romdhane scored a penalty 10 minutes into the second half before Ferjani Sassi and Issem Jebali scored to round off an impressive victory for the North Africans.<\/p>\n
Tunisia have been drawn with France, Denmark and Australia in World Cup Group D and they can reflect on a productive trip to Japan this month after also beating Chile 2-0 in last Friday’s semi-final.<\/p>\n
Tunisia and Japan, who are also bound for Qatar, both struggled to create clear-cut chances in a tight first half.<\/p>\n
Japan forward Takumi Minamino could only manage a fresh-air shot when the ball dropped invitingly to him in the box midway through the first half.<\/p>\n
Daichi Kamada was guilty of an even worse miss when he slid in at the back post 10 minutes later with the goal at his mercy.<\/p>\n
Minamino put the ball into the net at the end of the first half, only for the linesman to flag him for offside.<\/p>\n
Tunisia made Japan pay 10 minutes after the restart when Anis Ben Slimane released Taha Yassine Khenissi into the box and Maya Yoshida took him down with a poorly timed challenge.<\/p>\n
Romdhane stepped up and smashed the penalty past goalkeeper Daniel Schmidt.<\/p>\n
Japan then handed Tunisia a second when a defensive mix-up between Yoshida and Ko Itakura let Youssef Msakni steal into the box, and Sassi was in position to finish off his pass.<\/p>\n
Maaloul put the icing on the cake for Tunisia when he made it three after a break on the counter in injury time.<\/p>\n
In the day’s earlier game between beaten semi-finalists, Ghana beat Chile 3-1 on penalties after a 0-0 draw.<\/p>\n
Ghana, who have also qualified for the World Cup, finished the game with nine men after Alidu Seidu and Mubarak Wakaso were sent off.<\/p>\n
* Correction. It was initially reported that Ali Maaloul scored Tunisia’s third goal but it was Issem Jebali who scored it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tunisia stepped up their World Cup preparations with a 3-0 win over Japan in Osaka on Tuesday to finish first in the four-team Kirin Cup tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":9814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[7,14,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-9817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-sports","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n