The Japan national team of football (Japanese: SatsukaRi Ben Dai Biao , Hepburn: Sakka Nihon Daihyo) is known as"the Samurai Blue (samuraiburu, Samurai Buru) is the representative team of Japan in international football for males. It is governed by the Japan Football Association (JFA) the governing body of the game in Japan.
Japan wasn't a major football power until the middle in the 1980s, and had an amateur and small team. In the 1990s, as Japanese football was professionally regulated, Japan has emerged as one of the top teams in Asia They have been selected for the past seven FIFA World Cups with knockout stage appearances in 2002 2010, and 2018 and also won the AFC Asian Cup a record four times in 1992, 2000, 2004, and in 2011. They also placed third in the FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. Japan is the only AFC member of the AFC aside from Australia as well as Saudi Arabia to have reached the final of an elite FIFA men's event.
The growth of Japan over a brief time has been an example and an inspiration of how to grow football. Their main continental rivals include South Korea, North Korea, China and, most recently, Australia; they also have developed rivalries with Iran as well as Saudi Arabia.
Japan is the very first nation outside of the Americas to be a part of the Copa America, having been invited in the 1999, 2011 2015, 2019 and 1999 editions of the competition, however, they were only able to play in the events of 1999 and 2019.
