December 25, 2004

Semi-Surprising Semis

If you believed the pre-game hype, the two semifinal contests held on Christmas day were mere formalities that would inagurate the two "sure thing" victors as opponents in the final, on New Year's Day. Unfortunately for the pundits, Santa had a few surprise presents in his sack. In the early match, Tokyo Verdy stormed to a 3-1 victory over Gamba Osaka, in Osaka, while the afternoon match produced a narrow but not entirely undeserved win for Jubilo Iwata overheavily favoured Urawa Reds.

3 - 1

Though Gamba Osaka, playing what was essentially a home match, at Osaka's Nagai Stadium, were heavily favoured in this match by most of the sports tabloids, it is easy to see how they got their signals crossed. Gamba are certainly a good team, but they have had a number of sources of dissent in the ranks, this past year, and recent comments by Tsuneyasu Miyamoto that he wants to be traded to another club must surely have brought these problems to the surface. Meanwhile, the team's ace striker, Masashi Oguro, picked up a minor injury two weeks ago, and was unavailable, forcing Gamba to field a fairly diminutive strike team of Fernandinho and Kota Yoshihara.

But more importantly, those who wrote off Verdy's chances must not have been watching the team in its recent matches. Though they finished in the upper middle of the league table, this season, Verdy frequently showed the ability to outplay even the top contenders, when they were working smoothly as a team. This has been particularly true over the past few months. The strike partnership of Kazunori Iio and Kazuki Hiramoto have been playing so well that it is easy to forget Naoto Sakurai, who is no slouch as a striker, himself. Meanwhile, keeper Yoshinari Takagi is quickly emerging as one of the most athletic goaltenders in Japan. He tends to be a bit weak on set plays, but his reaction time and speed off the line allow the Verdy back line to cheat forward without worrying that a long ball will catch them out. Takagi is unequalled at clearing dangerous balls around the edges of the area. Best of all, ever since coach Ossie Ardilles has installed a double-barreled Kobayashi front in attacking midfield, Daigo Kobayashi and Yoshiyuki Kobayashi have engineereed an extremely creative passing attack that has been generating goals against even some of the best defences in the J.League.

Verdy took advantage of a slow start by Gamba, racing out to a two-goal lead over the first 25 minutes. Yoshiyuki Kobayashi got the scoring started with a lovely pass to Hiramoto on the left wing followed by a follow-up dash into the box. Hiramoto returned the ball to Kobayashi for an open half-volley that caught the low right corner, just beyond the keeper's reach. Ten minutes later, Hiramoto reversed roles, collecting the inlet pass from Iio and firing a low ball past the keeper to extend Verdy's lead.

After a weak opening session, Gamba came out in the second half fired up, and created a number of opportunities to score over the first 10-15 minutes. But without their ace finisher, Oguro, Gamba did a poor job of finishing off their opportunities, and the score remained in Verdy's favour. On the stroke of the hour, Verdy got the backbreaking goal on a corner kick from the left side. A long, looping ball cleared the pack and found defender Atsushi Yoneyama at the far postfor a header, which extended Verdy's lead to three goals. Though Gambsa dominated play for the remainder of the contest, Verdy were content to hang back, kill time and prevent easy shots. Though Gamba did get a late consolation goal from reserve striker Masanobu Matsunami, it was ar too late to catch the Tokyo green, who will take part in their first Emperor's Cup final in eight years (they won the cup in 1996).

1 - 2

If Verdy's upset of Gamba Osaka was a surprise, the match between Jubilo Iwata and Urawa Reds, at National Stadium, was even more unexpected. The Reds took part in the championship match in both the Nabisco Cup and the Suntory League Championships, whereas Jubilo had their worst season since entering the league, and have just barely scraped past weak competition from JFL and J2 clubs, over the preceding three rounds of the tournament. But the Reds seem to have a tendency to choke in big matches, this season, and this weekend's match was no exception.

Of course, it is important to note that this was an understrength Reds team. Emerson and Nene both returned to Brazil for Christmas, as did naturalised Brazilian-Japanese defender Tulio Tanaka. Alex Santos, meanwhile was hobbled by an ankle injury and had to limp off midway through the second half. Even so, the Reds seemed to have the better of this mach for the opening 45 minutes. They were unable to find the net, but they had a number of good opportunities over the opening 45 minutes, and seemed to be doing what they needed to do in order to win.

The second half was much like the first, with Jubilo throwing occasional counters at the Reds goal, but most of the offensive work taking place in front of Jubilo's net. In the 25 minute, Yuichiro Nakai beat his defender down the right sideline, played a perfect floater in front of the net, and Tatsuya Tanaka headed it home to put the Reds in front. It seemed as if the match was all over but the formalities.

But less than a minute later, Jubilo came storming back, splitting the Reds defence which seemed to lose its concentration right after the goal. A through ball by Ryoichi Maeda was tapped home by veteran Toshiya Fujita, and suddenly the match was on level terms, once more. As they have done repeatedly, this season, the Reds seemed to respond to adversity by choking. Shortly thereafter, Fujita was again allowed to dash into the penalty box unmarked and fire a shot under the keeper, though this time the goal was disallowed, as Fujita was narrowly offside. But this was just a hint of what was to come. Five minutes before full time, Fujita again managed to work his way free, and when the last defender lunged into his path, he slipped the ball through to Masashi "Gon" Nakayama for the go-ahead goal.

A minute later, it looked like the Reds were back on level terms, as Tanaka took a long pass on a breakaway, and beat the keeper. But the linesman's flag was up for offsides, and the goal disallowed. "Oddly enough", though they had shown replays of several other offsides playes over the course of the match, NHK decided not to show the play again to review it for a mistake. This strongly suggests that the offsides call was a bad one, Our video is not entirely conclusive, since the camera angle in the original (live) play shows only Tanaka's foot. However, it does appear that there is a Jubilo player further back, and that Tanaka may have been onside. In any event, this is a moot point. The call was certainly no worse than some of the others that have plagued the Emperor's Cup this year, and if the Reds really had wanted the win, they should have finished Jubilo off in the first half, when they were dominating play.

And so, the two underdogs advance to the showdown, on New Year's Day. Considering how eventful the tournament has been , thus far, the final is sure to be an exciting one.

Below is the full matrix of the tournament, so far:

December 20, 2004

Close Quarters

The four Quarterfinal matches in the Emperor's Cup once again provided a wonderful mix of entertainment, from the wide-open offensive battle between FC Tokyo to thedefensive struggle between cup holders Jubilo Iwata and feisty outsiders Consadole Sapporo. Even the 3-0 drubbing that JFL spstarts Thespa Kusatsu suffered at the hands of Tokyo Verdy was closer and more competitive than the final score line suggests, though it might have been even more interesting if the JFL had not upheld the dodgy red card susensions dished out to key Thsespa players in the previous week's match. Though time does not permit us to provide a detailed review of all four matches, this week, here is a quick summary of the action.

3 - 0

Just four days after their historic upset victory over the Yokohama Marinos, Thespa Kusatsu earned top billing in the weekend's match card. Unfortunately, despite a laudable effort, Kusatsu were worn out both physically and mentally, and had the added burden of having to compete without two of their best players, who were sent off (improperly, we might add) in the contest against Yokohama.

It didnt take long to see that this was not going to be a very good day for the amateurs from Gunma prefecture. Less than two minutes in, Verdy's speedy striker Kazuki Hirakawa sliced into the penalty box and was upended by a poorly-considered challenge. Though perhaps not as blatant as the two PKs that Thespa was denied, in Thursday's match, it was definitely an infraction and Verdy were properly awarded a PK.

Faced with a 1-0 deficit right from the start, Thespa were forced to try to create offence on their own, rather than hang back on defence and look for chances to counterattack, as they did against the Marinos. Though the team was certainly game, and put on a good show for about half an hour, Verdy were not about to take this match as lightly as the Marinos did, and their tough defending kept Thespa at bay, allowing only long shots from the perimeter. With ten minutes to go until half time, Verdy produced a backbreaking goal on a set play, with Lee Jan-Eun using his height to outjump the Thespa defence to a corner kick, and heading it past keeper Nobuyuki Kojima.

The two-goal deficit was simply too great for the underdogs to make up, and consequently, the second half of the match was rather dull, with Verdy using a crisp short-passing-game to kill time and wear out the Thespa defence. Midway through the period, Hiramoto delivered the coup de grace with another slashing run into the box, a cutback to beat Kojima, and a soft tap into the back of the net. But despite the disappointment of this contest, Thespa can certainly go out with their heads high. The team progressed further than any non-J.League club has ever done since the creation of the J.League, and knocked off the league champions in the process. No doubt, the gans from Gunma prefecture will be looking forward eagerly to the start of the new season, in 2005, when Thespa will join the J.League at last.

2 - 1

Although the rivalry between the Urawa Reds and Yokohama Marinos may have a longer and more dramatic history (running back to the Mitsubishi vs Nissan era), it seems that the fiercest rivalry in the J.League these days is the one developing between the Reds and their next-door neighbors FC Tokyo. The two are both young, offence-oriented clubs, and they match up extremely well against one another. Certainly the Reds have good reason to be wary of FC Tokyo, who not only upset them in a 1-0 battle during the second stage, but also claimed a PK shootout victory in the Nabisco Cup final. Since the fortunes of scheduling gave Urawa home-field advantage in this matchup, you could conclude that it was the Reds' turn to claim the honours.

But not without a fight. As is usually the case in contests between these two clubs, the tempo was ferocious and both teams were eager for a win. If not for some poor finishing in the first half, this could have been an extremely high-scoring match. As it was, the first goal did not come until the strone of the hour, when a long outlet pass down the left flank drew the Reds defence to one side, and a quick cross-field pass found Naohiro Ishikawa open, about five meters above the top right corner of the box. Ishikawa uncorked a powerful sinking line drive that eluded the keeper and found the low left corner, putting Tokyo in the lead, albeit breifly.

The Reds responded immediately with a surge of offensive pressure. Yuichiro Nagai, who had a particularly strong performance as the "number one" striker, in Emerson's absence, sliced into the penalty area and carried the ball almost to the right post before dropping apass back to Tatsuya Tanaka, for the finish.

There followed about 25 minutes of fierce football that surged from one end of the pitch to the other at a furious pace. Though the Reds seemed to have the slightly better chances, it was anyone's guess who would produce the go-ahead goal. With less than five minutes remaining in regulation time, Nagai made another slashing foray around the right wing, and this time his crossing pass found Alex Santos about ten meters out from the opposite post. Santos one-timed the looping cross and connected perfectly, sending a low bullet into the back of the net to give the Reds the victory and preserve their hopes of collecting at least one title this season.

1 - 0 (ET)

If Jubilo Iwata do manage to defend their Emperor's Cup title, it will go down in history as the most undeserved title ever. Jublio have had the incredible good fortune to draw three of the weakest competitors one could possibly envision, and yet they still have only managed to squeak through to the semifinals. While most J.League teams have faced competitive J.League opponents for the past three rounds of this competition, Jubilo's draw paired them with two amateur teams and the weakest club in the entire J.League. After a comparatively "convincing" 3-2 victory over the ninth-ranked JFL club Sagawa Kyubin, Jubilo needed a last-second goal from Norihiro Nishi to bail them out of a close contest with another amateur club, Gunma Horikoshi, last weekend.

This week, against J2 basement-dwellers Consadole Sapporo, who managed only five victories in a total of 44 J2 matches this season, Jubilo was unable to score a single goal over 90 minutes, and indeed, was very fortunate to avoid conceding a late winner on a corner kick that was headed directly into the arms of the keeper by Yushi Soda.

But four minutes into golden goal extra time, Toshiya Fujita managed to turn his defender the wrong way with a nice feint, and slip in behind the Consadole defence, to the left of coal. His cross was driven on goal by Rodrigo Gral, at point-blank range, but a superb diving save by Yosuke Fujigaya turned the shot away. Unfortunately, Consadole's luch had run out, as the ball fell right at the feet of Nobuo Kawaguchi, who tapped it home to give Jubilo a narrow victory. Though they now find themselves inthe semifinal, Jubilo will have to put on a far more impressive showing on Christmas Day if they hope to over come the Urawa Reds and advance to the finals, on New Year's Day.

0 - 1

The clash between Gamba Osaka and Kashima Antlers was characterised by some of the worst finishing the league has ever seen. The Antlers have become famed for this sort of performance, this season, but with ace striker Masashi Oguro out of action, Gamba joined in the act as the two teams combined to send nearly 40 shots on net -- many of them from point blank range -- without tallying a single goal. The Antlers seemed to have the upper hand in terms of possession and scoring opportunities, but their almost uncanny inability to put the ball into the net left viewers with a strong suspicion that their efforts would be for naught.

Sure enough, with abiout 15 minutes left to play, Gamba finally hit the nulon on a corner kick from the left side, which was headed home by defender Satoshi Yamaguchi. Gamba thus won the right to face off against Tokyo Verdy in the second semifinal match, on Christmas Day.

Here is the tournament matrix, with just two rounds left in the competition:

Back Numbers

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