21 Sep 2009(Mon)

September 18, 2009: Things seem to go from bad to worse for Tokyo Verdy, to such an extent that you wonder if the end is near.

For all traditionalists we hope not, as the club has played a huge part in the development and transformation of Japanese football since its founding in 1969.

Verdy were the first Japanese team I ever saw when they came to Hong Kong to play local favourites South China in the 1991-92 Asian Club Championship. I had seen many games in Hong Kong up to this point, and they had all been low-key affairs in front of cynical spectators who took a delight in jeering the mistakes of the players. I always used to think that the average Hong Kong football fan was the most impartial I had ever come across: they wanted both teams to lose.

But when Verdy, or should I say Yomiuri SC in those days, came to town, this was something completely different. There was a real buzz in the humid evening air on the walk from Causeway Bay to the national stadium, and the atmosphere inside was crackling. This was a proper match, for sure, and the Chinese fans pelted the Japanese bench with debris all game, earning South China a fine from the Asian Football Confederation.

A couple of years later, in October 1993, I travelled with another Hong Kong club, Eastern, for an Asian Club Championship match against the renamed Verdy Kawasaki at National Stadium. Trailing 1-0 from the first leg at Mongkok Stadium, Verdy turned it round and won 4-2 (4-3 on aggregate) with a couple of goals apiece from Bismarck and Shinji Fujiyoshi. There were 44,000 at Kokuritsu that night, despite Verdy missing all their national team players.

They were in Doha for the final qualifying round for the 1994 World Cup, and on the morning of Japan’s last match, against Iraq, Verdy’s Dutch coach Frans Van Balkom took me round the clubhouse at Yomiuri Land. I had never seen anything like it – boxes and boxes of fan mail for the likes of Kazu, Kitazawa, Takeda and Ramos; so much it blocked the corridors!

That evening I met up with Eastern’s foreign players to watch Japan-Iraq in a bar in Roppongi – and I had never seen anything like that either. One minute singing and celebration, the next utter despair and an empty bar within seconds of Iraq’s late equaliser.

Yomiuri Land--Doha…what a three-day trip to Japan that turned out to be!

Verdy battled on without the Yomiuri Shimbun, and now they’ve got to survive without NTV. Let’s hope they make it, otherwise only memories will remain.

ends