---

January 1, 2005

A Verdy Happy New Year

2 - 1

When the 2005 version of Verdy football club took the pitch, on New Year's Day, they were a very different bunch indeed. This time it was their opponents, Jubilo Iwata, who had the classy haircuts, the neat manicures, the air of superiority and egocentric disdain. Verdy, by contrast, looked like a group of young toughs who had just wandered in from an early-morning bar fight in Roppongi. Behind their unshaven faces and long unkempt hair it was hard to even tell that most of them were barely out of their teens. If Jubilo is the new "evil empre", with all its haughty airs and its vast arsenal of unsavoury tactics and gamesmanship, the new-look Verdy club is a collection of underappreciated, blue-collar grunts who deserve, as much as any other team in the league, the title of valiant underdogs.

But despite how easily this team has been overlooked by the mainstream sports press, Verdy are a highly competitive team that is just now beginning to show signs of its full potential. As the team's impressive victories over Nagoya Grampus, in the round of 16, and Gamba Osaka, in the semifinal, demonstrated, Verdy has a very active and well-disciplined midfield, and a collection of young strikers who can find their way through just about any defence. Sure enough, in the first half of this contest Verdy clearly held the upper hand, and with just a tiny bit of luck, could have taken a commanding lead into the locker room at half time. Kazuki Hiramoto wissed two golden opportunities, sending an open shot just wide of the right post in the 20 minute and, a few minutes later, heading a ball too steeply down, causing it to bound over the crossbar.

But in the 35 minute, Verdy won a free kick less than ten meters above the top right corner of the penalty area. Daigo Kobayashi sent a curling line drive onto Hiramoto's head, and the ace striker nodded the ball on for the far post. Once again, his aim was just slightly off, and the ball came back off the upright. But his strike partner Kazunori Iio swept in to side-foot the rebound into an open net. Verdy had a well-deserved lead, and seemed to have all the momentum on their side.

But some very shoddy officiating just a minute before the break would change the entire complexion of the match, and put Verdy in a hole. After stealing a ball at midfield, Jubilo's Takashi Fukunishi started a counterattacking rush, and when Yoshiyuki Kobayashi came in for a sliding tackle, Fukunishi used his guile to con the referee into showing Kobayashi his second yellow card. Though there was certainly contact on the play, replays clearly show that Fukunishi pushed the ball away from Kobayashi (having no intention of trying to regain possession), and then deliberately let his back leg trail behind so that Kobayashi would make contact. Anyone who has been watching European football for any length of time is familiar with this tactic -- one of the oldest variations on the "dive" every invented -- and more than a few European referees penalize it by showing a yellow to the player who got "fouled". But Kobayashi had no such luck with Mr. Joji Kashiwabara, who immediately went to his pocket and pulled out the plastic rectangles.

As poor as this call (and several other yellows awarded in the first half on plays that looked suspiciously like Jubilo play-acting, rather than Verdy fouls) may have been, we should give Mr. Kashiwabara credit for improving his performance in the secont half. Perhaps he had a chance to review the film, during the halftime break, and realised how badly he had been conned. Whatever the case may be, he restrained himself admirably, over the second 45 minutes, despite numerous attempts by Jubilo players to earn a cheap penalty kick.

Readers are probably already getting the picture of what sort of match Jubilo Iwata were playing, even if we do not go any further to describe it. But as regular readers will know, the Rising Sun News is never shy about making provocative comments when we feel that a player or team is acting in a disreputable fashion. Simply put, this was a display of shamming, conning, conniving and dramatic method-acting that would make even Rivaldo hide his face in embarassment. We counted six separate attempts by Jubilo players, in the second half alone, to win a penalty kick by throwing themselves to the ground in the area, and that was just for starters. On one Verdy counterattack in the second half, Makoto Tanaka very nearly removed the numbers from Hiramoto's jersey as he pulled him down from behind. The foul was the sort that a good veteran defender is expected to make, when beaten, and nobody would have been the leats bit bothered if he had just accepted the yellow card and walked away. But instead, Tanaka threw a temper tantrum, screaming and wailing while pointing to his own shirttails, as if he thought he could somehow convince the referee (as well as the other 50,000 people in the stadium) that HE was the one who had been fouled! .

Fortunately, fate appears to have had its fill of Jubilo's antics over the past year or two. Eight minutes after the break, Daigo Kobayashi and Hiramoto played a beautiful trap in the Jubilo back line and stole the ball from Toshihiro Hattori. Hiramoto was off to the races, speeding into the left side of the penalty area and then pulling a shot across the face of goal to catch the far corner, and push Verdy's lead to 2-0.

The remainder of the match was one prolonged effort by Jubilo to create a goal by whatever means possible . . . . and make no mistake, they tried every trick in the book. But for the Verdy defence held up for over 30 minutes before finally conceding a goal on a scramble in the box. Even this goal was sullied by what appeared to be a bit of gamesmanship by Jubilo. As he tried to force the ball towards net, Toshiya Fujita deliberately threw himself to the turf, hoping to claim a PK. As we have already noted, Mr. Kashihara was not about to be fooled again, and he waved play on, but four Verdy players threw up their hands and temporarily froze, to make it clear that they had not been the cause of Fujita's "trip". As the defence stood motionless, Norihiro Nishi swept in and poked the ball into the net.

But Verdy valiantly fought to keep Jubilo at bay for the final ten minutes, and when the final whistle sounded, the collection of grizzled veterans and young upstarts burst into tears of joy, as Verdy celebrated its first title since 1997 -- two years before the team moved to Tokyo.

For their part, Jubilo did not look like a washed-up team, by any means. They have the talent and mental solidity to contend for a title as early as next season. Our only hope for the coming year is that they dispense with the diving, the play-acting and other forms of "clever" gamesmanship, and just play football. If Verdy can transform themselves from a corrupt, overpaid collection of washed-up prima donnas to a hard-working and exciting group of victorious underdogs, surely Jubilo can do so as well. And if they kept their minds on playing football, instead of whatever else it was that they were trying to do in the Emperor's Cup final, they might even deserve to come out on top, once in a while.

Date: 1 January, 2005		Location: Tokyo Nat"l Stadium
2	1 1H 0 1 2H 1	1
Kazunori Iio (35') Kazuki Hiramoto (53')	Scoring	Norihiro Nishi (63')
Seitaro Tomizawa Daigo Kobayashi Yoshiyuki Kobayashi Yoshiyuki Kobayashi Kazunori Iio Kentaro Hayashi	Cautions	Hideto Suzuki
Y. Kobayashi (2Y)	Sent Off
Lineups: Yoshinari Takagi, Takushi Yoneyama, Seitaro Tomizawa, Lee Kang-ji, Takuya Yamada, Kentaro Hayashi, Takahito Soma, Daigo Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki Kobayashi, Kazunori Iio (Masayuki Yanagisawa 45), Kazuki Hiramoto .
Yohei Sato, Hideto Suzuki, Makoto Tanaka, Naoya Kikuchi (Nobuo Kawaguchi 65), Toshihiro Hattori, Takashi Fukunishi, Hiroshi Nanami, Takashi Kawamura, Norihiro Nishi, Rodrigo Gral (Toshiya Fujita 72), Ryoichi Maeda (Masashi Nakayama 45)

Rumours and Rumblings

The Kids Are All Right

Another reason for the low profile of the tournament this year was the fact that there were no "big stars" to draw the spotlight, as Kunimi High School's Sota Hirayama did last year. Many of the top-name schools were knocked out early in the competition, and even mighty Kunimi were defeated in the semifinal. But this was not so much a sign of weak footballing skills among this year's graduating class. On the contrary, the quality of play was quite high, but the balance betwen teams was much greater than in the past. As a result, there were few high-scoring blowouts, and a number of close, 1-0 or 0-0 (PK shootout) matches. A few players did stand out, such as Kunimi's Senma Watanabe and Seiryo HS midfielder Keisuke Honda, but with both of their teams bowing out in the semifinals, the final match was a contest between two well-balanced TEAMS, rather than between spotlight-grabbing star players.

The final, on January 10, was typical of this year's tournament. The underdogs in the final match, Kagoshima Jitsugyo High, dominated play for long periods with an all-out attacking style that provided a great deal of excitement. and numerous scoring opportunities, but well disciplined and physically imposing defence by Ichiritsu Funabashi HS kept the match scoreless through the full 90 minutes of regular time. Funabashi' had similar difficulty against their semifinal opponent, Seiryo HS, but eventually prevailed on penalty kicks after using their physical superiority to wear down the Seiryo players. This strategy was a bit disappointing, at times, as the Funabashi defenders pushed and tugged and jostled the Kagoshima attackers incessantly, without penalty, when a bit tighter enforcement of the rules might have produced a smoother flowing, more offence-oriented contest. Nevertheless, both teams showed a high level of skill and poise, and by the time the match moved into golden goal extra time, even these agressive defensive tactics could not restrain the furious offensive rushes at both ends.

But despite numerous close calls, the match ended in a scoreless draw, and was decided on penalty kicks in favour of Kagoshima -- perhaps a fitting finish after Funabashi claimed a PK victory despite being outplayed by Seiryo in the semifinal. As was the case of the tournament overall, the final was a bit disappointing from purely an entertainment standpoint. But the quality of play reflects the continuing advance of football in Japan, and it was clear from their performances that many of these players will soon be making their mark in the J.League. On paper, the 0-0 (PK 4-2) score line of the final will look less than dramatic. But seeing the quality of this generation of players, we can rest assured that these kids are alright.