The World Cup has a habit of creating strange incentives at the end of the group stage. In 1982, West Germany and Austria famously sleepwalked through the majority of a 1-0 German victory in their final group match, one which pushed them through at the expense of an Algeria team which had won the previous day. To prevent that from happening again, FIFA began to play the final matches from each group concurrently.
On Thursday, we saw the method's limitations. With Colombia beating Senegal, Japan recognized that they would be able to go through to the knockout round under FIFA's Fair Play tiebreaker by avoiding yellow and red cards.