10 Aug 2006(Thu)

Tokyo, August 9, 2006: The JEF United-Gamba Osaka game at the A3 Championship in Tokyo on Tuesday night really felt like a cup final.

It was fast and furious, with incidents and controversy at both ends.

In the end, of course, Gamba won 2-0, but the trophy and first prize of US$400,000 did not go to either of them. It went to Ulsan Hyundai, for whom Lee Chun Soo had been outstanding in a strong team effort.

The A3 leaves me with mixed feelings. Is it worth playing, or is it just another tournament that brings in money but clutters up the fixture list and disrupts the J.League season?

Overall, I think it deserves to stay in the calendar, but it should not be played mid-season. A pre-season tournament, for example in early March, for all three countries makes much more sense, and would give the teams a chance to finetune their line-ups for their coming domestic campaigns.

The timing of the 2006 edition has been poor, not only resulting in another frustrating break in the first division when it was just warming up again but also depriving new national coach Osim of players from two strong teams.

The Gamba-JEF game saw the Osaka club inflict another defeat on the Chiba team, shortly after they had won a recent J1 clash at Fukuda Denshi Arena.

Endo was the hero and then the villain for Gamba, first scoring with a great free kick, low into the corner, but then paying an expensive and embarrassing price for an arrogant approach to taking a penalty. (Was it really a free kick, just outside the JEF box, when Magno Alves went flying through the air? To me he was moving across the box, had pushed the ball too far to his left and simply took off into the night sky. Replays may prove me wrong, but I didn't think it was a free kick.)

Shortly after, when Abe was late on a sprightly Myojin, the ref awarded a penalty. Endo was way too casual with his kick, walking up to the ball, and then playing a back pass to Tateishi, who saved easily.

Possibly feeling he had to make amends to JEF, the Korean ref then awarded United a penalty when Sakamoto gave a fine impression of Kosuke Kitajima leaping off his podium into the Olympic pool. Like Kitajima at Athens, that deserved a gold medal, too, possibly two! I was not the only member of the media laughing in the press seats when the ref pointed to the penalty spot, but Abe hit a home run out of the ground and into Jingu Stadium.

The match could easily have been 2-0 to Gamba, and then it could have been 1-1, but it was still 1-0 to Gamba after the two penalty misses. What a great game football is!

It was left to Bando to settle the issue with a fantastic goal, a diving header which flew in off the underside of the bar.

Bando had also scored at "Fukuare" in the recent league game, and that was a fine finish, too, into the bottom corner with his right foot.

When Osim looks through the JEF, Gamba and Antlers teams ahead of next week's game against Yemen, Bando might not be too far away.

ends