6 Oct 2008(Mon)

October 3, 2008: A few months ago, Weekly Soccer Magazine asked some football writers around Japan to pick a player who was not in the national squad but who may add something different.

My suggestion was Yutaka Tahara, the burly centre forward of Kyoto Sanga FC.

I could have made a safer choice, such as Mitsuo Ogasawara, but preferred an element of risk and of the unknown. Tahara seemed to fit the bill, and in an area of the game where Japan is most definitely open to offers.

Perhaps it was my English heritage that led me to select Tahara, as the big, brave No. 9 is the hero of the boys' comic books -- the player who scores the winning goal in the cup final at Wembley by hurling himself into the flying boots in a muddy penalty box and bursting the net with a diving header.

I saw this quality and potential in Tahara, so put his name forward in the magazine survey as a player who was worth looking at but not, for a minute, suggesting he was the instant answer to Japan's problems. He might have looked a bit like Batistuta in his scraggly-hair days, but I was not saying he was the Japanese "Batigol".

With this is mind, though, it was reassuring to see Tahara being named Man of the Match by certain sections of the media when Kyoto drew 2-2 at Urawa on a cabbage patch of a pitch at Komaba on Wednesday night.

Playing alongside Yanagisawa and, for 26 minutes, until his unfortunate injury attempting a bicycle kick, the incredibly talented Fernandinho, Tahara was a real handful for the Reds defence, in the air and on the deck. He played a big part in Yanagisawa's equaliser, forming a one-man wall to protect his strike partner, and came close with a couple of towering headers as the match progressed.

"Maybe his top performance this season," Kyoto's manager, Hisashi Kato, said of Tahara after the game.

"In the summer season he is not in good condition. It's the same every year. In summer his condition goes down, and I don't know the reason because he is from a very hot prefecture, Kagoshima," added "Kato-Q".

"In summer he loses a lot of energy through perspiration, but now he is showing his top performance."

In previous chats with Kato-Q, the Kyoto manager said Tahara struggled to control his weight in summer because he gulped down too many sugary drinks in the hot and humid Kansai conditions.

But now, as the temperature drops and the humidity levels fall from summer baseball weather to conditions more conducive to football around the world, Tahara is just getting warmed up.

Are you watching Oka-chan?

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