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November 3, 2004

Nabisco Cup Final: Not for the Faint of Heart

Sadly, I did not possess the foresight to buy this chap tickets to the 2004 Nabisco Cup final. If I had, not only would his question have been answered conclusively, but the world would now be a better place for having one additional fan of The Beautiful Game.

Naturally, all sports have their good points, otherwise they never would have become popular in the first place. Basketball has its quick pace and constant swings of momentum, with scores added several times in just a minute of play. Baseball has its sudden bursts of action and feats of individual skill. Hockey, rugby and American football all have hard-hitting body contact as well as swift and fluid team action, while some people enjoy the strategic gamesmanship aspect of American football, and the way that it resembles a tactical war game or a strategic challenge like chess.

If I were asked to explain what it is about international football (ie "soccer") that makes it uniquely appealing and, in my own personal opinion, truly beautiful, I could only do so by comparing it to something besides other sports. A truly great football match has the nature of a finely written suspense novel, or a dramatic play. It has characters, subplots, story lines and an interplay of action. It has drama and bravado, cunning and guile, deceit and dastardly deeds, heroes, villains and comic releif. A well-played football match is, in other words, something more than just a "sporting event". It is a true-life drama which becomes more meaningful and more compelling the closer you read it, and the more intensely you care for the individual characters. It has multiple levels of meaning, each one of which can stir the emotions in a multitude of ways. Joy, agony, anger, pain, suspense, disappointment . . . oh, all sports have these things in at least SOME degree, but as anyone who watched the Nabisco Cup final match between the Urawa Reds and FC Tokyo, on Wednesday afternoon, can tell you, there is simply no comparison between the "sporting spectacle" that you might enjoy at a baseball match, and the Shakespearean drama that unfolds when two talented and determined football teams meet in a championship match.

Readers are probably wondering why I am babbling on about "the meaning of football" rather than just reporting on the Nabisco Cup Final. The reason, quite simply, is that this was a match worthy of a master playwright, and only a novel-length exposition by a Hemingway or a Tolstoy could fully capture the threads of plot and subplot, the ebb and flow of momentum, the excrutiating combination of suspense, agony and exhilaration that kept over 55,000 fans in the stadium and hundreds of thousands watching at home hanging on every single touch of the ball. Not a single goal was scored until the start of the penalty shootout -- one hundred and twenty minutes of action without any "payoff" whatsoever. Yet what a precious 120 minutes they were!

I am certainly no Hemingway. No Tolstoy. Not even a half-baked Dashiell Hammett. Any effort I make to put the drama of this contest into words will surely fail. And yet, I owe it to my readers to at least say SOMETHING about this contest, even if it falls far short of a true "report" of this magnificent match. I suppose I can at least try, as best I can, to at least sketch the outlines of the contest.

Here is what happened . . .

In the midst of the massive towers of steel and concrete . . . in the center of the great asphalt plain that stretches from the southern hills of Saitama to the flat marshes of Chiba, from the great river valleys of the Tonekawa and Arakawa to the broad bay vistas of Yokohama, and back again . . . in the very heart of this man-made maze of bitumen, metal and glass, there was a small but immaculate rectangle of emerald green, which lay beneath an impossibly blue crisp autumn sky. A paradise among the ruins of Babylon. A stage, perhaps, where all the joys and tribulations of mankind could be distilled and drunk, and enjoyed to the last drop in that drama they call "The Beautiful Game".

It was on the third of November, in the fourth year after the second millenium, that the two great tribes assembled -- the mighty Red Army of Saitama and the thundering blue horde from the hills of Musashi -- travelling afar from their sterile homes and gather about the emerald oasis. They poured like a wild torrent into the towering stands of Tokyo's National Stadium, filling the high terraces in throngs of blue and red, and filling the air with the triumphant sound of their cheers, as they awaited the arrival of their heroes, for the start of the contest. . .

Although the Urawa Reds entered the arena as heavy favourites to claim the great silver cup for a second straight year, the matchup for this contest could not have been more ideal. For one thing, FC Tokyo are the only team in the league that could possibly come close to matching the Reds in fan support at National Stadium. Indeed, though the upper tier of the back stand seemed to be filled almost entirely with Reds fans, in the lower tier, the sea of blue at the Shinanomachi end of the stadium reached nearly to midfield before fiving way to a blanket of red. More importantly, though, FC Tokyo match up very well against the Reds. Despite having just a modest record this season, they are the only team that has managed to defeat the Reds in the second stage. This is partly a tribute to their youth and speed. In addition to fan support, FC Tokyo are also the only team in the league that could conceivably allow the Reds to turn the contest into a footrace, and still have a chance of winning. Furthermore, Tokyo's preferred strategic set -- a 4-5-1 lineup that generally tries to hang back on defence and then launch lightning counterattacks -- matches up very well against the 3-4-3 set that the Reds have been using, of late.

For the opening 30 minutes of play, the match swung back and forth, in exactly the sort of pattern that one might have expected. The Reds used quick balls into the front line to probe for openings and try to create a quick goal, while Tokyo pressed hard and midfield and when they won possession, tried to create quick breaks with superor numbers. Although the Reds' attacking trio of Emerson, Tatsuya Tanaka and Yuichiro Nagai seemed to be slightly better at breaking down the opposing defence, FC Tokyo's ability to get the ball quickly down the wing, to players like Naohiro Ishikawa and Mitsuhiro Toda , then feeding it to the middle for Lucas Severino and Clesley "Kelly" Guimares . Both teams were producing good chances, and the initial impression was that this could turn into a wild, high-scoring contest.

But on the stroke of the half-hour, a tragic accident occurred which changed the entire plot, and provided the first hint at the sort of intense, suspenseful drama that this match would become. Just ten minutes into the contest, as the Reds pushed the ball forward on the attack, Jean Carlo Witte got isolated one-on-one with Nagai, who tried to use his superior speed to just blow past the slower defender. Jean, knowing that he had a card to waste and perhaps trying to use "intimidation" to play a mind game on Nagai and give him second thoughts about trying such a move, took him down with a deliberate professional foul. It was a clear yellow card offence, and Jean did not even bother to argue. Unfortunately, this would come back to haunt him just a short time later. On the stroke of the half hour, Emerson got a quick outlet pass and accelerated into space on the right side. Jean had good position and moved forward to cut off the angle, and force Emerson into the corner. But as Emerson passed by, the two accidentally knocked knees, and Emerson went flying. It certainly was a foul, but it also certainly was accidental. Even the Reds players seemed to think so.

Unfortunately, as the fates would have it, the J.League -- in their inimitable "wisdom" -- had decided to appoint Mr. Toshimitsu Yoshida as the head referee in this contest. Naturally, Mr. Yoshida has never had a clue about the difference between accidental fouls and deliberate ones (some would argue that he simply "never had a clue". Period.), and he certainly has never shown the circumspection that most competent referees employ, in order to avoid making a bad call that alters the flow of a match. So it came as no surprise that he went right to his pocket for a second yellow card. Jean was devastated, realizing what he had done to his team's hopes of a title, and he had to be almost carried, in tears, to the sidelines.

Sure enough, this incident changed the entire dynamic of play. Now, FC Tokyo were even MORE cautious and defensive in their play, counterattacking quickly when the occasion presented itself but never throwing too many players forward. As a result, the Reds also found themselves with less room to work with, and their running game began to stall. Nevertheless, both sides did manage to continue producing shots on goal, and it was only due to some remarkable saves by the keepers at both ends -- Yoichi Doi for FC Tokyo and Norihiro Yamagishi for the Reds -- that the match remained scoreless at the half.

Over the second 45 minutes, the stars of the contest were Tokyo central defender Teruyuki Moniwa and midfielder Yasuyuki Konno. The Reds naturally had spent the halftime break discussing the best ways to use their man advantage to break down Tokyo's defeence, and they used just about every trick in the book over the remainder of regulation time. But Moniwa and Konno turned in truly monstrous performances, covering the pitch from sideline to sideline and turning away just about every thrust that the Reds threw at them. As a result, the contest remained very evenly matched. Moniwa and Konno (with plenty of help from their teammates) managed to essentially negate the difference in numbers on the defensive end, allowing FC Tokyo to continue counterattacking in numbers. The Reds had a slight edge in scoring opportunities, but it remained only slight until the late stages of the second half.

The Reds, for their part, continued to play attractive, agressive, attacking football, though they seemed to be just a bit too casual in their finishing. Perhaps the knowledge that their man advantage would eventually wear down the less numerous opposition (particularly in a championship contest, which could go into extra time) led them to be a bit overconfident. Nevertheless, as time ticked down in the second, you could see the FC Tokyo players running out of gas. Possession swung more and more heavily in the Reds favour, and after growing unusually silent in the middle third of the match, the Saitama Red Army began to grow increasingly vocal as FC Tokyo"s narrow escapes became more and more desperate.

By now, anyone who began watching the contest as a neutral observer had to be leaning heavily towards the underdog FC Tokyo team, who wer displaying a tremendous degree of determination and sheer guts. As anyone who has faced them in a league match will attest, the Reds are a brutal opponent from the standpoint of physical stamina. Their speed, agressive ball movement and relentless forward pressure will wear down any opponent, and by now FC Tokyo had been playing for close to an hour with one fewer players on the pitch. Yet FC Tokyo refused to give an inch. A small yet striking illustration of this "never-say-die" determination came around the 85th minute when Tokyo got a rare breakaway, with Naohiro Ishikawa dashing after a long ball into the Reds end. Ishikawa was obviously at the limit of his endurance, while the Reds player covering him was Tadaaki Hirakawa, who had just entred the match a few minutes earlier. It was almost excruciating to watch Ishikawa's tormented face as he struggled in vain to get his legs to move faster, but in the end he lost the footrace, and the opportunity for a late goal vanished.

Ninety minutes without a single goal, yet this match had already produced more drama than most contests. Both teams had seen shots beat the keeper, only to be cleared off the line by a flailing defender. Both keepers had bailed their team out with nearly miraculous saves, and both teams had produced wide-open scoring opportunities only to rush the shot and pull it wide or sail it over the crossbar. Now, the REAL drama would begin.

As noted earlier, it would take a writer of considerable genius to describe this match and do it justice. Having done my best to summarise the events of the 90 minutes of regulation time, about all I can do to express the drama that was packed into those two 15-minute periods of extra time is to tell you that I was literally rolling on the floor in a mixture of excitement and disappointment, with tears beginning to form in my eyes, as the Reds threw themselves forward relentlessly in a furious effort to put their opponent away. Yet their chances wold narrowly miss their target time and time again, taking the enormous crowd at National Stadium, and all those watching at home, on another roller-coaster rush of suspense, anticipation and then disappointment/releif.

By this point, the ten FC Tokyo players were so exhausted that they could hardly even make a pretence of generating offence. There were one or two occasions when Lucas, in a bit of valiant one-on-four dribbling, managed to win a free kick, and the Tokyo players would roll the dice hoping for a miraculous goal. But essentially, those final 30 minutes resembled one of those old B movies, like "the Alamo", "the Outlaw Josey Wales" or "Fistful of Dollars", where a small group of hopelessly outmatched people are holed up in the fortress, knowing that the very best they can hope for is to just stay alive, and hang on until the cavalry arrives. Time after time the Reds stormed the fortress, and time after time the defenders would somehow, some way, manage to fight off the attack.

By the time the final whistle blew, everyone was on the point of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion -- and that's only talking about the fans. After a contest like this one, as any football fan knows, a penalty kick shootout can not help but be an anticlimax. Yet even the exchange of PKs provided some tremendous drama, as the Reds' third kicker, Tatsuya Tanaka, drilled his PK off the crossbar only to have the next kicker, Yohei Kajiyama, leave his shot an inch too low, allowing the Reds keeper Yamagishi to palm it onto the crossbar and restore the two teams to level terms. But when Yoichi Doi dove to his left and smothered the shot by Nobuhisa Yamada, Tokyo's Akira Kaji had only to find the net and his team would have their first trophy ever. Kaji's shot sent Yamagishi the wrong way, and the Tokyo bench exploded with delight. mobbing the players still on the field, and dancing with their ecstatic fans who filled the early dusk with joyous celebration.

For the Urawa Reds and their fans, disappointment will probably be tempered by the knowledge that a league title is nearly in their grasp. All in all, the Reds left little doubt that they are a better team . . . on average and most of the time. But one of the great joys of this beautiful game is that sometimes the best team DOESNT win. And THAT is the sort of story line that makes for great drama.

Hemingway, Shakespeare, Dashiell Hammett . . . even the masters could not have written a better script. And if anyone should ever ask you how somene could possibly get enjoyment or excitement out of a sport where lots of the matches end in a 0-0 deadlock . . . just hand them the video tape of this one. That should answer the question once and for all.