Argentina’s draw with Japan is the biggest upset of the World Cup so far

The year is 2015 and Japan is still an international powerhouse.

It travels to Canada late in the spring hoping to defend its 2011 Women’s World Cup title and nearly does it, just falling short against the United States in the championship game.

Argentina is absent altogether and just a few months later its players will have nowhere to play. By the end of the summer, funding runs out and Argentina shuts down its women’s program for about two years.

Here’s how you can watch the Women’s World Cup: Full TV schedule, times, dates, scores

Somehow, the two-year gap wasn’t a death knell for Argentina’s 2019 Women’s World Cup hopes. Argentina started playing again in 2017 and finished third in Copa America, earning a spot in a playoff to win its way to France for the 2019 World Cup.

This all made for one of the most unlikely opening-week matchups of the World Cup, pitting Japan and Argentina against each other in a Group D match and, somehow, Argentina played to a 0-0 draw against Japan in Paris.

Perhaps the biggest upset of the World Cup is how Argentina, which had an alltime scoring differential of negative-31 in two previous World Cup appearances, secured its first point on the world’s biggest stage.