21 Jul 2008(Mon)

July 18, 2008: Several thousand J.League fans must have been grateful for the later evening kick-offs in midweek -- and the teams responded with value for money at both matches I attended.

On Wednesday it was FC Tokyo against Gamba at the National Stadium, followed by Reds against Verdy at Saitama Stadium on Thursday.

Both matches had a 7.30 kick-off, and that extra half-hour for fans to get to the ground surely contributed to almost 28,000 at National Stadium and over 35,000 at Saista.

These are excellent crowds for midweek games, and also good policy to split the fixtures over two match nights in terms of publicity and media/TV exposure.

Let's start at National Stadium. It was great to see Naohiro Ishikawa flying down the wing again for FC Tokyo, turning the clock back to when he was one of the most exciting players in the league.

Had centre forward Cabore been a bit sharper in front of goal -- as sharp as Akamine, for example -- FC Tokyo could have capitalised more on the dynamic wing play of Ishikawa.

But Akamine, Tokyo's "fox in the box", remained on the bench until the 81st minute, by which time Ishikawa was long gone and on the bench himself since early in the second half.

And what on earth was Sota Hirayama doing in the first half getting himself booked for simulation?

The big man had plenty of opportunity to shoot for goal, but was reluctant to pull the trigger. When the chance had gone, he made a late attempt to earn selection for Japan's Olympic diving team, and referee Takuya Maeda had an easy job in locating his yellow card -- once he had stopped laughing, that is.

A 1-1 draw was fair enough -- but a consequence of watching Gamba is that for the next few days I can't stop singing the fans' catchy anthem, "Moonlight Shadow" by Mike Oldfield (or was it by Sally Oldfield?)

(By the way, one line in that has always puzzled me: "Four a.m. in the morning," she sings -- as if 4 a.m. could be in the afternoon! For English students, a good example here of tautology.)

Back to football, and to Saitama Stadium on Thursday night.

A full moon was shining brightly and it certainly brought out the beast in Tulio -- and the best in him, too.

At times it looked like there were three Tulios on the pitch for Reds, one at the back, one in midfield and one up front -- winning headers, winning a penalty, scoring a penalty, scoring headers, having Nasu for breakfast (as opposed to Nato for breakfast like most Japanese).

Congratulations, too, to referee Yuichi Nishimura for showing some commonsense and not booking Tulio for his theatrical goal celebrations, which involved running behind the goal and balancing rather precariously on the advertising board to milk the applause of the fans.

I was worried that the ref might book him for showing the passion and emotion FIFA president Sepp Blatter is always talking about, and was very encouraged to see him let it go.

Two very enjoyable J.League nights.

The only problem is..."4 a.m. in the morning -- carried away by a moonlight shadow (shadow)."

Try it on Youtube and you will see what I mean!

ends