27 Oct 2008(Mon)

October 24, 2008: What a slick and confident performance that was from the away team in their Champions League match in midweek.

In a pressure-cooker atmosphere they remained calm, focused and clinical when it really mattered to run out comfortable winners.

Yes, that was a memorable display by Arsenal away to Fenerbahce, well worth the effort of waking up early on Wednesday morning in Japan to catch the occasion.

In the evening the action switched to Saitama Stadium 2002, where Gamba Osaka played like the Arsenal of Japan in beating Urawa Reds 3-1 in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final.

Like Arsenal, Gamba like to pass and move and torment the opposition before finally applying the killer touch. Sometimes they can overdo it with the intricacy of their build-up, but when they add a ruthless streak to their stylish approach it all looks too easy.

At a buzzing Saitama Stadium, Gamba were magnificent in the second half and left Reds a broken team.

Naturally they were ready for a first-half onslaught from the home team, and turned around only one goal down after Takahara had fired Reds ahead. After the game, Reds manager Gert Engels said the turning point of the match was his team's failure to add a second goal when they were in the ascendancy, and Gamba surely recognised that, too.

When the second half began, with the dangerous Sasaki on for Roni, the visitors had decided it was time for action. They knew that Reds could not maintain such a high tempo for the entire 90 minutes, so moved up a gear as smoothly as a finely-tuned engine.

Their teamwork and cohesion began to tame the individual talent within the Reds ranks, and their equaliser came quicker and easier than expected with Yamaguchi's free header at an Endo corner.

Although there was an element of luck about Myojin's goal that put Gamba 2-1 up on the night, there was no doubting who was on top by now, and who was looking the more dynamic of the two teams.

The longer the match went on, the more Gamba exposed Reds on the counter-attack, to the point that they looked like scoring with every attack in the last 15 minutes.

A wall of noise from the Reds fans urged their team forward, but they were running on empty and being stretched all over the park by the well-drilled Gamba unit.

The third goal was a gem, with so many quick, slick passes that it confused the spectators as well as the Reds defence before Endo put them out of their misery with the perfect finish. It was like the end of a bull fight, cruel but inevitable, as the final rapier thrust of the matador took down the brave, bewildered foe.

ends