It's a blog (in English mostly) all about football...in Japan with the J-League and Cerezo Osaka, in the English Premier League with Spurs and anywhere else the football takes us.
An entertaining
game, bad defending meant we had lots of chances. Kempes missed after a defensive
error in the first minute and hit the post twice but did get on the
score sheet using his head which was his seventh goal in the league. Kakitani continues to add to his goal
tally this season with his eighth in the J-League. Star signing Simplicio made
up for giving away a penalty with his first goal since his move from
Serie A, he had an almost identical effort ruled out for offside
minutes earlier. A great result against a S-Pulse team in transition.
We're not out of danger yet but it's nice to write about a match and
not say "we were poor" for once. Kansai derby up next and
it's a big one with Vissel Kobe needing points to avoid being dragged
into the relegation dogfight. Genki Omae with a penalty and Alex Brosque form a free kick scored for S-Pulse. Brosque has just signed for Al Ain FC in the UAE where he joins Asamoah Gyan. Shinji Ono also left S-Pulse to join the Western Sydney Wanderers as their marquee signing.
Fans behind the goal did a great job of trying to put Omae off his penalty
Culpi a lot less animated than usual after his return from retirement
Yoichirou Kakitani opened the scoring for us after 15 minutes as Kempes managed to hit the post with an easy header as the Shimizu keeper Hayashi lost his bearings. Kakitani was there to knock in the rebound. It was an odd game, Shimizu could have gone top of J1 with a win but looked disjointed for most of the match until a late surge as they sensed the home fans weren't happy with the performance so far and the prospect of losing their unbeaten home record this season. Cerezo looked nervous and would have been happy with a point prior to the game but after spending most of the match in front must feel slightly downhearted. Bo-Kyung managed to make himself a bit of space for a shot in the first half but otherwise he and Kiyotake were relatively subdued. Kempes managed to completely mess up a one on one with the keeper, although he got himself into that position well, if he was more composed we could have come away with all three points (about 4mins into the highlights video). So with the very last kick of the game Australian Alex Brosque scrambled the ball home which left our keeper Jin-Hyeon down injured and our manager Soares upset with the officials. Japan manager Zaccheroni was at this game although he couldn't have been very impressed by what he saw.
