Albirex Niigata 1 - 0 Cerezo Osaka

This was a game we were expecting to at least come away from with a point but after Edno spurned our best chance created by Kakitani we were left with nothing as another bit of dodgy goalkeeping from Jin-Hyeon presented the ball to a grateful Kentaro Ohi who wrapped up the 3 points for Albirex. This video shows highlights of the all the recent J.League games with a focus on the returning heroes from the East Asian Cup in South Korea where Zaccheroni was successful with an experimental squad. Kakitani scored 3 goals in the two games he started including a brace that sealed victory for Japan. Yamaguchi was named player of the tournament while Ogihara also made his debut for the national team. From a Cerezo point of view this has raised the profile of the young players making it tougher to hold on to them when foreign clubs start their approaches. But another way of looking at it is that now they are under pressure to be consistent performers which will only help us in the league this season. After that who knows? The Cerezo highlights start at 03:24 on the video and are followed by a chat with Kakitani.

7 game unbeaten run in J1! Cerezo 2 - 1 Nagoya Grampus

Edno scored his first goal in the J-League as we rode our luck a tad on our way to getting 3 points. Another entertaining game and I'm glad the Grampus fans got to see a Kennedy consolidation goal as they really added to a fantastic atmosphere. Kakitani got our second after a sublime first touch from Edamura's through ball. He's now joint top of the J1 goalscorers charts with two other players. Grampus hit the woodwork twice during the course of the game but it's now becoming clear that Culpi may be close to replicating his ACL qualifying formula before his first retirement a couple of seasons back. There's now a one month break in J1 but we face Urawa Reds on the 23^rd and 30^th this month in the quarter finals of the Nabisco cup. This match was sold out possibly thanks to a half-time appearance from FC Nuremberg and former Cerezo midfielder Kiyotake.

Brilliant support from Nagoya

Kincho Stadium sold out

Where does one buy a Cerezo microphone?



We finish top of our Nabisco Cup group! Cerezo 2 - 1 Kashima Antlers 1

A very unexpected goal, he showed composure and a stunning finish in the 2^nd minute. Who am I talking about? Edno! Congratulations on his first goal and actually looking like a footballer. Culpi dropping him for a few games seems to have done wonders although I would still like to see Sugimoto start for the time being. Edno was subbed before the end of the match as his reverted to his usual anonymous footballer role. Antlers, who started the day at the top of the standings, then equalised but that man Kakitani popped up again to ensure our passage to the league cup quarter finals in pole position. To be fair he did more than just pop up, he ran with the ball from our half and as the Antler's players closed in smacked in the winner from just outside the box.

Cerezo Osaka 2 - 2 Urawa Reds

Both teams were evenly matched and a draw was always on the cards but it was by far the most entertaining game this season. Golden week, discount tickets and Urawa Reds helped to fill Nagai Stadium with 32,378 people enjoying the match. The Reds supporters didn't cause any problems this time except for their usual uncourteous (for Japanese football fans) behaviour. Sugimoto's strike and all round play means Edno will be on the bench for the foreseeable future. As usual at home after taking the lead we always look like letting the other team back into the game. Also our policy of not tackling or defending corners properly allowed Urawa to take the lead. Yamaguchi equalised and after that both he and Simplicio came close with long range efforts. Very positive signs from this game although our lack of width is worrying especially for Sugimoto who would thrive on some decent crosses. Hopefully playing away at Kawasaki Frontale will give us a chance to build on this performance and cement our position in the top half of the table.

Football fans and/or wannabe hooligans

They're not scarves BTW they're called "towel mufflers"

Keeping things in order

 



Shonan Bellmare 0 - 3 Cerezo Osaka

Again Edno didn't start and this time didn't come off the bench either so I'm starting to wonder whether we night be loaning him out to a J2 team this season (he himself is on loan to us from the Mexican club Tigres but we've done similar things before). But on to more positive things we scored 3 great team efforts with Kakitani grabbing two to put him on 6 league goals this campaign ( 6 more than Edno...sorry!) and Yamaguchi getting the other. Sugimoto looked really comfortable and was on the same wavelength as his team-mates as he was involved in all of the goals. Next up this Golden Week Urawa Reds visit Nagai Stadium and we're all hoping their fans are on their best behaviour after Shimizu.

Cerezo kick off the season with a win

Kakitani's calm finish secured an incredibly undeserved 3 points as Albirex will be wondering how they are going home with nothing. No outfield player for us performed particularly well as Jin-Hyeon had to be in top form to keep us in the game. Worryingly our new no.9 Edno “the Rock” lived up to his nickname by being a motionless inanimate object for most of the game before being subbed. Hopefully Culpi will change the starting line-up for the next game as quite a few players failed to impress but Ogihara's introduction added some urgency and bite to the midfield. An unexepectedly depressing moment came as we brought on the re-branded Branquinho who now goes by “Branco”. This is a guy we have on loan and we subsequently loaned to Yamagata in J2 as he proved to be largely ineffective last year. As he came on looking at his name on the scoreboard I thought it was a new signing until on closer inspection it turned out to be our unsuccessful loaned loanee sneaking back on to the pitch under a different name, very odd. In other news congratulations to Shinji Kagawa who grabbed a hat-trick in the early hours this morning for Man U against Norwich. Man U will visit Osaka in the summer for a friendly bringing with them overpriced tickets, an extra game in the middle of the J1 season and the Japanese superstar we sold for 350,000 Euros. All said and done we got 3 points but if we can't improve drastically we could well be flirting with relegation again. 

 

New uniform, 2013 fixtures and a reminder of why the number 8 is so important!

First match of the season in Nagai Stadium

New kit revealed

"Adventure" (Dancing Heart) Our slogan for this season

Here are the first set of fixtures in J1 with the kick off times available. The rest can be found here in Japanese. There's a pleasing number of Saturday afternoon games before summer and we start the season in Nagai Stadium. Golden week fixtures this year feature an away trip to Shonan Bellmare and Nagoya Grampus at home. Strange not seeing another Kansai team here as we keep our fingers crossed that Gamba can make it to the JFL this year. The new kits are looking good. New signing Kusukami has the number 10 while Kakitani inherits the number 8 once worn by club legend Hiroaki Morishima. No number 9 yet as the club have yet to finalise the Edno Cunha signing. Pre-season we're heading to Thailand to face our partner club Bangkok Glass on the 7th this month. Click here for more information on the partnership.

1 2/3 Sat 14：00  Albirex Niigata 大阪長居スタジアム 2 9/3 Sat 14：00  Ventforet Kofu (A) 山梨中銀スタジアム 3 16/3 Sat 15：00  ＦＣ Tokyo 大阪長居スタジアム 4 30/3 Sat 13：00  Vegalta Sendai 大阪長居スタジアム 5 6/4 Sat 15：00  Kashima Antlers (A) 県立カシマサッカースタジアム 6 13/4 Sat 19：00  Omiya Ardija 大阪長居スタジアム 7 20/4 Sat 13：00  Shimizu S-Pulse (A) 日本平スタジアム 8 27/4 Sat 14：00  Oita Trinita キンチョウスタジアム 9 3/5 Fri 16：00  Shonan Bellmare (A) Shonan BMWスタジアム平塚 10    6/5 Mon 16：00  Urawa Reds 大阪長居スタジアム 11 11/5 Sat 15：00  Kawasaki Frontale (A) 等々力陸上競技場 12 18/5 Sat 15：00  Kashiwa Reysol (A) 日立柏サッカー場 13 25/5 Sat 19：00  Nagoya Grampus キンチョウスタジアム 14 6/7 Sat 19：00  Jubilo Iwata (A) ヤマハスタジアム（磐田） 15 10/7 Sat 19：00  Yokohama F. Marinos キンチョウスタジアム 16 13/7 Sat 19：00  Sanfrecce Hiroshima (A) エディオンスタジアム広島 17 17/7 Wed 19：00  Sagan Tosu キンチョウスタジアム 18 31/7 Wed 19：00  Albirex Niigata (A) 東北電力ビッグスワンスタジアム 19 3/8 Sat 19：00  Venforet Kofu キンチョウスタジアム 20 10/8 Sat 19：00  Omiya Ardija (A) NACK５スタジアム大宮 21 17/8 Sat 19：00  Shimizu S-Pulse キンチョウスタジアム 22 24/8 Sat 19：00  Nagoya Grampus (A) 名古屋市瑞穂陸上競技場 23 28/8 Wed 19：00  Vegalta Sendai (A) ユアテックスタジアム仙台 24 31/8 Sat 19：00  Kawasaki Frontale 大阪長居スタジアム

Cerezo news update

Japanese clubs' fortunes are heavily linked to the companies which own them so this year as Yanmar's stock has risen we have a little bit more cash than usual to spend. Thanks in part to Shinji Kagawa Yanmar has become a sponsor of both Borussia Dortmund and Manchester United. Traditionally Yanmar Deisel's sales have been from industrial farm equipment in Japan but recently they have been expanding by providing emergency power generators in Europe. This explains their push to sponsor European teams and also a newly found desire to back Cerezo to help further increase their international profile. Man Utd are pencilled in for a friendly in Osaka this year. The plan seems to be working judging by this in the Daily Mail mentioning Yanmar in an article. So will this renewed effort lead to wise investments or will we squander the cash on journeymen Brazilians? All of the transfers listed below have been announced on the Cerezo website as of today with the exception of Edno Cunha for some reason. It seems the 29 year old is on loan from Mexican club Tigres. He represented Brazil at U20 level and has played for a lot of clubs in a few different countries managing to score over 10 goals in a season just once in career playing as a second striker. He's pretty much guaranteed to start every game whether or not he's any better than the players we already have so check out his YouTube highlights. His nickname is “The Rock”. Fingers crossed he can do the business in the J-League. As for the other transfers there aren't any players that stand out as obvious starters but they should help be able to help out as squad players. Sadly Daisuke Takahashi is now out of contract and going through rehab for his knee injury after previously fighting back from a fractured skull. Hopefully he can come back from this too. At the moment Takahiro Ogihara remains a Cerezo player despite a bid from FC Nurnberg. He will move but it remains to be seen whether it will happen this winter or more likely in the summer. Yoichiro Kakitani is also interesting a number of European clubs.

IN:

Takeda Yohei from Shimizu S-Pulse

Mukuhara Kenta on loan from FC Tokyo
Kusukami Junpei from Kawasaki Frontale
Toru Araiba from Kashima Antlers
Gu Sung-Yun from a high school in Korea!

OUT:

Kenya Matsui to Tokushima Vortis

Tada Ryosuke to Thespa Kusatsu on loan
Ogino Kenjiro to Albirex Niigata Singapore FC
Kodama Arata to Oita Trinita
Funatsu Tetsuya returns to Toyama Kataller after loan
Daisuke Takahashi released