14 May 2009(Thu)

May 12, 2009: Football is all about passion and emotion, as FIFA president Sepp Blatter keeps reminding us.

The trouble is, when you show too much passion and emotion, you can often receive a yellow card.

Just ask Ryuji Bando.

Those were joyous scenes at Banpaku on Sunday, when Bando scored his first league goal of the season 10 minutes after coming on as a substitute.

His clinical finish into the bottom corner, after allowing Endo's sumptuous pass to run across him in the inside right channel, was the final nail in Reysol's coffin, the visitors slumping to a 4-0 defeat.

Bando loves his football, and this was plain to see when he hurdled the advertising board, removed his shirt and whirled it round his head as he raced round the track. With new signings Cho Jae Jin and Leandro blocking his route to the starting line-up, Bando was determined to make his mark -- and did so with his goal and his Iniesta-style celebration to pick up the yellow card.

No doubt he felt it was worth it, just to release the frustration of sitting on the bench. You could say it was a case of getting it off his chest, in more ways than one.

From one amusing incident to a rather bizarre one in the Vissel Kobe-Nagoya Grampus game on the same afternoon.

I am, of course, referring to the amazing own goal by Vissel's Korean midfielder, Kim Nam Il.

As the TV replays show, he started the "move" well inside the Grampus half, before back-tracking into his own half and seeing his long-range back-pass elude his goalkeeper Enomoto and sail into the net. Grampus striker Davi was celebrating long before the ball crossed the line, such was the hopelessness of the situation for the Vissel defence.

And if the Grampus fans want to rub it in whenever they meet Vissel in the future, they could do worse than check out an old Tottenham ditty used to taunt their fierce north London rivals, Arsenal.

It involved the former Tottenham midfielder Nayim, who scored a sensational goal for Real Zaragoza against Arsenal in the 1995 European Cup Winners' Cup final from way out on the right touchline, some 20 metres inside the Arsenal half. Spotting Arsenal keeper David Seaman off his line, Nayim's inch-perfect lob dropped just under the crossbar for a goal that even the Tottenham fans celebrated with the chant "Nay--im, from the halfway line!"

"Nam--Il, from the halfway line!" fits quite nicely...

ends