DURBAN, South Africa — Yuji Nakazawa defended Japan's spoiler tactics in Saturday's 1-0 defeat to the Netherlands and said getting behind the ball en masse was the only way the Blue Samurai could have realistically hoped to get a result against the Group E favorite.

"It can't be helped. When you look at who we were playing and see what an attacking force they were it, was all we could do. We had to be careful about conceding goals so we had to play like that," Nakazawa said.

"We just have to be glad that we didn't lose 3-0 again," said Nakazawa, referring to last September's defeat away to the Netherlands in a friendly.