December 7, 2003
Clear Field for the Emperor's Cup
Kunimi High School provided some excitement for those who love a lost cause, striking in the 3 minute to take a 1-0 lead over Kawasaki Frontale, who finished third in the J2 this season! But despite struggling gamely throughout the match, the high school kids simply couldnt challenge the physical superiority of the professional players from Kawasaki. Be that as it may, Kunimi won admiration from the partisan Kawasaki fans for refusing to abandon their attacking tactics even when the score began to grow lopsided. With five minutes to play and their team trailing 6-1, Kunimi pulled off one of their defenders to bring on a third striker, and increase the pressure of their bid for one last goal. Sadly, despite some very close calls as Kunimi threw eight players into attack, it was Kawasaki that got the final tally, finishing with a 7-1 victory.
One other high school team did scrape through, though against relatively mild competition. Ichi-funabashi High School snatched a narrow, 1-0 victory over Hannan University, and thus won the right to take on Yokohama Marinos next weekend. No high school team has ever defeated a pro club (though Ichi-funabashi beat a team composed partly of retired J.Leaguers, last weekend), and it seems highly unlikely that this year will break that streak. However, Ichi-funabashi can be proud to have advanced this far, and will surely be thrilled just to take the field against the J.League champions.
Apart from Sagan Tosu, who were eliminated a week earlier, all eleven remaining J2 clubs advanced, and four more spots are filled by JFL teams, so the third round will start with Ichifunabashi as the only rank outsider left in the field. Nevertheless, J2 teams have always enjoyed the opportunity to prove their mettle by knocking off a first division club. Next week promises some real excitement, and hopefully will generate more upsets than we had this past weekend.
Below is the full table of results for the first round
Rumours and Rumblings
Vissel Kobe on the Auction Block
In a startling announcement just prior to the team's entry to the Emperor's Cup competition, Vissel Kobe filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that the team would be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the end of this year.
Vissel has struggled almost continuously since it entered the league, in 1997, and has been plagued by a variety of ills including weak local support, poor management and unreliable corporate sponsors. Although all of these factors contributed to the team's demise, the biggest problem appears to have been the fact that the politicians of Kobe city continuously meddled in the team's affairs in order to keep a J1 team in the city. J.League management has repeatedly criticised Vissel for "living beyond their means", hiring players with high price tags whose name recognition was superior to their playing capabilities. Examples abound, though the team's splurge in 2001-02 clearly pushed their finances over the edge.
Beginning in early 2001, began to pack its roster with has-beens, who may have been well-known even to non-football fans, but whose contributions to the team were far less meaningful. Kazu and Yasu Miura were perhaps the most "symbolic" signings -- two plauers who were very famous, but who most teams in the league viewed as nothing more than relics. The team added a host of other former national team stars who had since fallen out of favour, including Shigeyoshi Mochizuki, Masayuki Okano, Takashi Hirano and Shoji Jo. Even as recently as late 2003, the team's infatuation with washed-up headliners was apparent when they acquired Bismarck Baretta Fario, a former star with Verdy and Antlers but who had been dismissed more than a year earlier due to his fading skills.
The team had been dependent on loans from the Kobe city government for years, and it appears that interference from politicians had some impact on these poor management decisions. Whatever the case, the team's payroll, for all the "big-name" players, could not be justified by its income. Attendance averaged just a shade over 10,000, even after the team moved to its new stadium, Kobe Wing Stadium, in mid-2002. The team had a deficit of about 4.2 billion yen as of February 2003, and that amount was probably increased by some1-2 billion this year.
Vissel Kobe will be auctioned off, perhaps as early as January, though conditions of the sale are that the new owner will not change the club name or the home city and stadium. Rakuten Ichiba, an Internet shopping organization that currently is a corporate sponsor of Tokyo Verdy, is said to be interested in the club.
Yoshito Okubo Named Youngster of the Year
Cerezo Osaka striker Yoshito Okubo was named "AFC young player of the year" by the Asian Football Confederation, in their annual awards ceremony. Though Okubo has been in the J.League for three years, the AFC awards define youth players very broadly, and thus Okbo qualified as one of three nominees for the award. Previous winners from Japan have included Shinji Ono and Kazu Miura. Okubo not only established himself as the ace striker for Cerezo, but has been called up to the national team as well, though he has yet to score his first goal in a Japan uniform.
Ironically, just hours before the award was announced, Okubo was sent off in Japan's East Asian Championships match against Korea. Okubo's scoring ability is well established, but he also has a reputation for having a short fuse. He was sent off twice and received 14 yellow cards over the course of the J.League season this year, in addition to his 16 goals in 24 appearances
Coaching Roulette Wheel Lands on Reds
Every December, one of the most entertaining pastimes for compulsive gamblers is betting on where the various coaches in the J.League will end up next season. Though there are occasional cases where a team will bring in someone new, it seems that much of the activity involves the same faces, endlessly recycled to new teams. This is not to say that the quality of coaching personnel is poor. On the contrary, many fine coaches lose their positions for reasons that seem to make little sense from a longer-term perspective. Coaches fired for failing to achieve success at one mid-table struggler are pressured into stepping down, join a new team, and immediately take their new club to a championship whereas the team they left suddenly finds itself plunging into relegation (Can you say "Consadole"? I thought you could).
This season, the coaching carousel should be a great deal of fun to watch. We arent even a full week into December and already heads have rolled at almost a dozen clubs, whereas one coach has been fired and hired in the space of a month. So lets have a look at some of the latest moves, and how they are likely to affect the situation in the J.League next season.
Though it is still early in the game, it is already looking like Urawa Reds will be the big winners of the roulette match this year. On the morning after the team won its first title ever, in the Nabisco Cup championship match on November 3, coach Hans Ooft leaked the news that he would not be back at the club next year. From what information has trickled out since then, it seems that the team had been unhappy with Ooft's performance for quite some time, had dropped hints that his job was in jeopardy, and Ooft decided to go public with his own resignation on the day after the victory in hopes that fan reaction would force the club to beg him to stay. Unfortunately, the Reds front office greeted Ooft's announcement with a bland statement that they "respected his desire to step down".
Regular readers of the Rising Sun News will no doubt be aware of our views on Mr. Ooft's strategic shortcomings. Not that he is necessarily a "bad coach", but it just seemed like he wasnt the right person for this team. In any event, our view is that the departure of Ooft is no big loss for the Reds. But whether Ooft's departure is seen as a plus or a minus, the coaching staff that Urawa has selected to replace him could one day be viewed as the greatest personel coup in league history. On Wednesday, the team announced that its coaching staff will be led next season by general manager Guido Buchwald, with Gert Engels as his head coach.
Buchwald will need no introduction to Reds fans, since he was one of the most popular players ever to don a Reds uniform. A huge, charismatic yet soft-spoken gentleman, Buchwald was a source of inspiration to the entire team during his days as a player, and had a wonderful rapport with the fans. These qualities are unlikely to change when he steps in as general manager. But the gem of this deal is the acquisition of Gert Engels as head coach. Engels has been in Japan for a decade, and is one of the few foreign coaches who can speak Japanese fluently enough to coach his players without an interpreter. His first appearance in the J.League came in 1998, when he was brought in mid-season to try to rescue the struggling Yokohama Flugels. Engels took a demoralised mid-table club and led them to a 7-2 record, including five straight victories down the stretch. Yet the Flugels' corporate sponsors had already dug the grave and no sooner had the season ended than they announced plans to disband the club. Far from being demoralised, Engels took this as a personal insult, and a challenge. Though the club closed its offices, locked the gates to the practice field and refused to lend support to the team as it prepared to take part in the season-ending Emperor's Cup, Engels went out, rounded up his players, and said "Lets go win a title."
The rest is history. Wearing patches of athletic tape to cover the corporate insignias on their uniforms, the Flugels ran off a string of six straight victories to capture the Emperor"s Cup on New Year's Day 1999, and dealt the death blow to corporate control and meddling in the J.League -- a victory which still resounds today in the refreshing innocence of the Japanese game.
Two years later, Engels was called in by Kyoto Purple Sanga in a last-ditch effort to rescue the team from relegation. Though unable to avoid the drop, he improved the team to a 6-1-8 record in the second stage. The following season, in the J2, Engels led Sanga to a quick rebound to the J1 and built a team of young unknowns into a highly effective and exciting unit that was ready for the challenges of the J1. In 2002 the team finished with a record of 17-1-12, and won the Emperor's Cup at the end of the season. Yet Sanga would show him little loyalty. Following a difficult spell in early 2003, the team tossed him overboard in what proved to be a huge blunder. After Engels' departure the team's record only got worse, and they were relegated at the end of the season. Ever since, fans of teams around the league have speculated hopefuly that their team might bring in Engels as a saviour. In that sense he has become something of a "Lone Ranger" figure, and in our view, his true abilities as a coach, a keen judge of talent, a brilliant tactician and a purveyor of team harmony are at least as good as the legend.
It is still too early to know how Engels and Buchwald will allocate responsibilities at Urawa, how well they can motivate the team and what prospects await in 2004. However, based on the record and character of these two men, we urge those who are inclined to the occasional sports wager to proceed immediately to Ladbroke's and put down a fiver or two on the Reds to win it all in 2004.
Kyoto Purple Sanga and Cerezo Osaka both pulled the plugs on their coaches before the season was over, with almost equally dim results. Sanga actually made two changes over the course of the year, foolishly tossing Engels away at midseason and bringing in Pim Verbeek. The Dutchman, who is clearly no Engels, was unable to rescue Kyoto from relegation and he was shown the door as well, one week before the season ended.
As if to demonstrate that they could have done a lot worse than to put Verbeek in charge, Kyoto picked up coach Akihiro Nishimura, just two weeks after he had been fired by Cerezo. In Nishimura's favour, it should be said that he is a well-liked individual who developed a good rapport with players at Cerezo and led them back to the J1 just one year after relegation, in 2002. However, that certainly does not rank him as one of the top coaches in the league, and given Kyoto's troubles, they will need a strong leader if they hope to return to the J1.
Cerezo, on the other hand, turned overseas for help, hiring Croatian coach Nadveza Peter to take over from Nishimura.
It appears that Zdenko Verdenik will be staying in Sendai after all. Though we reported, based on some news releases after Vegalta's season-ending loss to Oita, that Verdenik would be departing after the season, it now looks like he will stay on, and try to help the team reclaim a spot in the top-flight division. As we have noted in the past, we view Verdenik's deadly dull defensive style as a detriment to the team, rather than a boon. However, he is likely to instil greater discipline than the team had under the relaxed, hands-off reign of Hidehiko Shimizu. We will reserve judgement on the decision for the time being, and see what Verdenik can do between now and next season. However, one of Sendai's greatest strengths has always been its fan support. If Verdenik's dull tactics start driving away the fans, we hope that the team will be ready to move quickly in finding a replacement.
Three other coaches took a spin on the roulette wheel over the past week. In Kobe, head coach Hitoshi Soejima confirmed that he will be stepping down after the Emperor's Cup. Shimizu S-Pulse coach Takeshi Oki had indicated a few weeks earlier that he would step aside, but officially confirmed it on Tuesday. Finally, Jubilo Iwata coach Masaaki Yanagishita agreed to step aside following a conference with the team management on Wednesday. None of these teams has indicated who will take over, though rumours in Shimizu have turned up the name of Nicanor de Carvalho, formerly coach of Sao Paulo, as wel as former Brazil assistant coach Antoninho
Ichihara Sayonara: JEF Drops Their Captain
The end of the regular season is always a time of both joy and sadness, not only in terms of which teams claim victory and which must swallow defeat, but also in terms of team restructuring. Coaches and players who failed to make the grade are informed that their services are no longer required, while veteran players must decide (often in response to quiet "suggestions" from the front office) when to officially announce their retirement.
This week, however, one particularly surprising bombshell was dropped in Ichihara, as the team's long-time captain and poster boy, Eisuke Nakanishi, received word that JEF United does not intend to renew his contract next season. At age 30, Nakanishi is by no means a washed-up old man. He seemed to provide a fairly solid defensive performance for much of the year, though he was clearly being phased out by coach Osim as the season wound down. Most likely, the coach simply wants to make the clear transition to a younger club, and in doing so feels the need to "change the face" of the team both literally and symbolically.
Nevertheless, one wonders if Nakanishi will latch on with another team for another year or two, or whether he will choose to go out while still a quality performer. In any event, when he does retire Nakanishi will surely earn a place in our Hall of Fame. With over 285 league appearances and an impressive 33 goals from his defensive position, Nakanishi certainly deserves the title "Mr. JEF", and he had a fairly distinguished career for thre national team as well, during the mid-1990s.
End of an Era in Kashima
Following the news of dramatic player reshuffling at teams such as JEF United, Vegalta Sendai and Kashiwa Reysol, it seemed that no personnel announcements could really surprise, anymore. However, the Kashima Antlers made headlines with what were clearly the most dramatic player cuts thus far in the 2003-04 offseason. The team announced on Tuesday that they will not be offering contract extensions to long-time captain and defensive cornerstone, Yutaka Akita, or left wing back Naoki Soma.
Akita and Soma, who were also teammates on the Japan national team for years, including 90-minute appearances in all three matches of Japan's 1998 World Cup campaign, have been together in the Antlers back line since the league kicked off, in 1993. Soma spent one year on loan at Tokyo Verdy, as he was rehabilitating from a serious knee injury in 2001, but returned to the team this year to rejoin what had become the most veteran back line in the league.
Although both players are on the downhill slope of their careers, neither one seems so diminished in quality that they could not put in another useful year or two. However, the problem may be that both are too expensive for Kashima to carry. The team has top-quality backups who have proven their skills in game situations and are clearly ready to take over a starting role. Based on salary estimates drawn from tax information (the actual amounts of J.League salaries are never publicised) Akita's current contract is estimated at close to 100 million yen, which makes him one of the highest-paid players in the league, and Soma is not far behind. It would appear that the team is satisfied that its younger defenders can do the job just fine, and wants to use some of the money currently tied up in these to players' contracts to acquire some new talent up front (the Antlers have been linked to Kyoto Purple Sanga's Teruaki Kurobe, among others).
Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that both Akita and Soma will be claimed by some other team next season. In fact, depending upon what sort of offers they receive elsewhere, they could even be back in Kashima next year, if they agree to re-sign with the Antlers for a lower amount.
That will not be the case, however, for another Antlers veteran. Naoto Honda will apparently hang up his boots after the Emperor's Cup campaign following a career that spanned over 325 league matches. Honda also had several caps for the national team, in the mid-1990s. A highly popular player in the Antlers clubhouse, Honda remained a key member of the team even after his playing abilities began to desert him. He was rumoured to be on the verge or retirement at the end of last season, but decided to come back for one last year and made some surprisingly useful contributions in the second stage, when injuries sidelined some of the team's younger players. Honda will surely be added to the Rising Sun's J.League hall of fame at the end of this year.
In addition to these three high-profile moves, Kashima also released Euller, who has played for the team since 2002, but never really made much of an impact. He spend much of this year sidelined due to injury, and it seems that the Antlers decided to look for a younger player to take his place next season. Two reserve goalkeepers -- Riki Takasaki and Shinya Kato -- were released as well.
King of Tokyo Relinquishes his Throne
Another long and storied career came to an end in Tokyo, this week, when Wagner Pereira Cardozo (Amaral) called an end to his J.League career at the ripe age of 37. Amaral has been the heart and soul of the team for over a decade, earning the nickname "The King of Tokyo", and living up to the title even in his declining years. Amaral joined the former semipro team Tokyo Gas in 1990, and was already a well-known figure and the team's ace scorer when Tokyo Gas became a part of the reconstituted JFL in 1993. Tokyo Gas regularly finished near the top of the league, but opted not to join the J.League due to its strong ties to the parent company, nd the unwillingness of Tokyo Gas to grant the independence required under J.League rules. But when the league was reorganised again, in 1999, Tokyo Gas finally established a separate organisation for its football team, and FC Tokyo was born.
Amaral was naturally the team's star, and main attraction for fans. Even at age 32, he led the team in scoring and assists, helping FC Tokyo win the J2 championship in the second division's inaugural season. He continued to provide much of the team's offence after FC Tokyo advanced to the J1, the following year, but by 2002 his goal tally was starting to fade and his knees were giving out. He spent almost half the 2003 season in the physical therapy room, yet still managed to score four goals in 16 appearances. His finest years were clearly spent in semipro obscurity with the JFL, yet he is anything but obscure to football fans in Tokyo. In just five seasons he racked up 49 goals in 101 appearances -- surely enough to qualify for the J.League hall of fame. In the annals of J.League history, there is little doubt that people will remember "The King".
Vegalta Clears Out the Old Wood
JEF United were not the only team to announce the release of high-profile players. Other teams are also beginning to plan for next season, and in doing so, have begun to announce the names of people who will not be offered contracts for next season. Naturally, the first place that such roster-cutting would be expected is at the two teams that will be relegated to the J2 next season. Kyoto Purple Sanga have not yet made an announcement, but Vegalta Sendai opted to get all the heavy cutting out of the way with one axe-swipe. The team named seven players -- all veterans with a quality pedigree -- who will be released as of December 31. Though some of them may very well be scooped up by other clubs, for a few, this may be the end of the J.League road.
The two who seem most likely to hang up the cleats for good are Ichizo Nakata and Hajime Moriyasu, both of whom were among the ranks of J.League founders, playing key roles on two of the top teams in the league's initial season. Moriyasu entered the league with Sanfrecce Hiroshima, and was a central player in that team's relative success during the first three or four seasons, including a stage championship and a league cup victory. After a decade in Hiroshima, he was picked up by Sendai in 2002 and was still demonstrating his fierce ball pursuit and distribution abilities in the final matches of this season. However, at age 35 he will probably accept a graceful retirement at the end of this season. Nakata, meanwhile, was a member of the original Yokohama Marinos, moved to Fukuoka when Avispa joined the league, and spend a few years at JEF United before coming to Sendai at the start of this year. Though "only" 30, he will probably retire as well, joining former Marinos teammate Takahiro Yamada, who left Vegalta Sendai for retirement a few weeks ago when an injury cut short his final season.
Another former Marino, Norio Omura, was also on the list of players released by Vegalta. At 33, he may be ripe for retirement as well. However, prior to an injury that sidelined him for the final three months of the season, Omura was one of Vegalta's star contributors, and many feel that if he had remained healthy, the team could have avoided relegation. We believe that he will be picked up by another club, though possibly a J2 club looking for a wise and influential veteran to bolster their back line.
The other players listed were Fabiano, Toshiyuki Abe, Yasushi Fukunishi and Toshihiro Yahata. Apart from Yahata, all seem young enough and talented enough to attract offers from other teams, though they may have to settle for a J2 club.
The best news for Vegalta fans was probably the announcement that Zdenko Verdenik will not be back at the helm next season. Verdenik took over late in the season, after Hidehiko Shiumizu was relieved in a bid to avoid relegation. Far from rescuing the team, Verdenik simply stamped his patented dull, defensive, play-for-a-scoreless-draw strategy on the team, turning a group of exciting losers into a team of dull, boring losers. Verdenik will be replaced by Koji Tanaka, a former coach of Bellmare Hiratsuka during their J.League days.
Vissel Kobe Break up the Kazu & Yasu Show
In Kobe, the big story this week is the impending retirement of Yasutoshi Miura, currently the league's oldest player. Miura is probably best known for being the elder brother of Kazuyoshi "Kazu" Miura, though Yasu certainly made his own mark in the league. After playing for Shimizu S-Pulse during the first few years of the J.League, he moved to join his brother at Verdy Kawasaki, where their antics both on and off the field led sportwriters to speak jokingly of the "Kazu & Yasu Show". After Verdy's collapse in 1998, Yasu moved to Avispa Fukuoka, while Kazu briefly attempted to make a career in Croatia, but soon was back in Japan with Kyoto Purple Sanga.
Vissel Kobe reunited the "Kazu & Yasu Show" in 2002, when both players had matured and apparently outgrown their wild youth. Following dedicated physical regimens in an effort to regain some of their lost form, both showed flashes of their old quality in 2003, but clearly were nearing the end of the long road. Though Kazu apparently hopes to hang on for another season, news from Kobe indicates that Yasu has decided to hang up the cleats after the Emperor's Cup, this year. Despite a career in his younger brother's shadow, Yasutoshi Miura is surely another candidate for the J.League Hall of Fame.
More Bombs in Chiba: Reysol Release Watanabe
Apparently, Chiba has become ground zero this week, as Kashiwa Reysol followed their cross-town rivals JEF United in dropping a bombshell on local fans. The team announced on Monday that they will not be offering a new contract to midfielder Mitsuteru Watanabe for the 2004 season. Watanabe is one of the team's few remaining veterans, an has been with the team since graduating from Waseda University. In 2001, after the team had reached the peak of its performance with consecutive finishes in the top four over the previous two years, Watanabe was awarded the role of team captain under the short-lived domain of Steve Perryman. However, Watanabe may have been poisoned by the Perryman chalice. His career nosedived soon thereafter, and during the 2003 season he was asked to fill in as an occasional defender -- when he played at all -- rather than at midfield. At 29, it seems unlikely that his career is over, but his star has certainly fallen since the halycon days of 2000, when he was briefly viewed as a potential inclusion in the national team midfield, alongside players like Ono, Nakata, Inamoto and Nakamura.
Joining Watanabe in the unemployment line will be goalkeeper Dai Sato and head coach Marco Aurelio. Though Aurelio did a fine job of leading the team's talented teenagers from adolescence to the professional stage, Reysol's head office have not been particularly patient with coaches in the past, and the team's 11th-place finish in the second stage seems to have been his downfall. He will be replaced by the team's current youth coach, Tomoyoshi Ikeya.
S-Pulse and Cerezo Fire Foreigners
Cerezo Osaka and Shimizu S-Pulse both took steps to open up spots for new overseas players next season. Cerezo released all of the foreigners on its roster: Forward Marcelo Baron Polanczyk, who has played in the J.League for 7 years including stints at Ventforet Kofu, JEF United Ichihara and Shimizu S-Pulse, joined the team at the start of this season, but failed to make much of an impact. Joao Carlos dos Santos, a central defender, made a solid contribution to the team over the past two years, but an injury sidelined him in September and at age 32, Cerezo apparently decided to look for younger talent. Midfielder Axel, meanwhile, was signed at midseason but failed to impress in 15 league appearances (nearly half of them as a substitute).
S-Pulse also rid themselves of some aging foreigners -- Livonir "Tuto" Ruschel and Emerson Carvalho da Silva. Both had been reduced to only spot duty in the latter stages of the season, and although Tuto's infrequent appearances were partly due to injury, it seems that the head office in Shimizu will go for a younger look next season, perhaps bringing back Jose Martins Junior (Juninho), a Brazilian immigrant to Japan who was a high school star in Aomori prefecture before joining S-Pulse and spending last year on their reserve squad.
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