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Your support makes all the difference.Sweden continued to shoot themselves in the foot in their World Cup preparations, as England's first opponents conceded an own goal in a lacklustre draw against the tournament's co-hosts Japan.
Two days after a very public training-ground brawl, which vied with Roy Keane's misbehaviour for newspaper attention, defender Johan Mjallby put through his own net to cancel out a first-half opener from Aston Villa's new signing Marcus Allback.
The Swedes made headlines for the wrong reasons on Thursday, when Freddie Ljungberg became embroiled in a brawl with Olof Mellberg during an otherwise innocuous practice match. The Arsenal midfielder was incensed after being caught late by the Villa defender.
However, hatchets were buried and both players were in Sweden's starting line-up as preparation continued for Sunday's opener. Sweden went ahead in the 20th minute when Allback poked home from seven yards after being played in by Henrik Larsson.
Japan's best effort of a disappointing first half had come two minutes earlier when Hidetoshi Nakata tried his luck from 35 yards, but Magnus Hedman was able to grasp the ball under the bar.
Japan, who begin their tournament against Belgium in Saitama on 4 June, improved after the break and levelled in the 63rd minute. Alessandro Santos crossed, and although Nakata missed the header, he did enough to put off Hedman, who failed to cut out the danger. The ball found the net via the shins of Mjallby.
Japan almost snatched a win deep in injury time, but Takayuki Suzuki dragged his shot wide from 10 yards out.
Japan's French coach Philippe Troussier was satisfied with his team's performance. "Japan is a small nation in football," he said. "We learned a lot today against Sweden, one of the world's top 10 teams. Nobody's perfect. We didn't win the match today. But they tried all the time to score."
The Sweden co-coach Lars Lagerback was not quite so easily pleased. "We didn't play well in the first half," he admitted. "But Japan played very well. Our team worked hard, but we had problems with the positions in defence. In the second half, our defence got much better. We also had good goalscoring chances. But overall our attacking game was not so good."
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