16 Apr 2007(Mon)

April 14, 2007: When Urawa Reds bought Yuki Abe from JEF United in the close season, they got a lot for their money.

A central midfielder, a libero, a goal scorer...and now a match-winning left back in Reds' most recent outing.

That came at Saitama Stadium 2002 on Wednesday night, when they beat Shanghai Shenhua 1-0 in the third round of Asian Champions League group games.

Abe is one of the best headers of a ball in the J.League -- just check out his two great headers at Oita recently -- and proved it again with another athletic effort from Ponte's free kick.

Abe's goal, in the 43rd minute, was greeted with a sigh of relief among the people who wanted to see a football match, as the time-wasting tactics of Shanghai were threatening to turn another Asian Champions League match into a farce.

Even though they had lost their first two games and needed a win here, the Chinese started like they were 1-0 up with five minutes to go, trying to protect a slender lead.

This was particularly noticeable when they ventured forward and actually won a corner. The player taking the kick would walk as slowly as possible to the corner flag, eating up the seconds in order to preserve the stalemate for as long as possible. Was it only the referee that failed to spot this?

As a colleague pointed out, what would have happened if Shanghai had gone in front? It does not bear thinking about, but possibly the goalkeeper would have been "injured" on a regular basis.

So well done to Reds, and also to Frontale for their excellent win in Korea. They needed to put that dire performance at home to Bangkok University firmly behind them, and did so in emphatic fashion to take control of the group at the halfway stage.

One thing that puzzled me about the fixture list on Wednesday was that the Nabisco Cup and J2 were also being played on the same night as the Asian Champions League. This diluted the significance of the Asian Champions League, instead of the football focus being fully on Japan's teams in the continental club championship. Seemed a bit strange to me, as the Nabisco Cup suffered, too, in terms of attention.

This coming Wednesday, on the other hand, Japan's Under 22s are away to Syria in Olympic qualifying, but there is no Asian Champions League, no J1, J2 or Nabisco Cup in Japan on the same night.

ends