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.
The Mexican fans weren't happy after this one. Ex-Spurs 'player' (did we really get 9.8 million GBP for him?) scored the winner. This was the first time FIFA has held Club World Cup games in Osaka and there was a whiff of money making around. The matchday programmes were more expensive than the tickets. Yanmar Stadium reverted to Nagai Stadium or Osaka Nagai Stadium which meant the massive Yanmar sign on the stadium was painted over. The tickets were very reasonable though with the cheapest starting at ￥2000. This was some of the best football I had seen in the stadium for a long time, mainly because Cerezo weren't playing. Evergrande showed their riches with Robinho starting, their 2nd World Cup winning coach, Scolari (he won the Japan/Korea 2002 WC with Brazil) patrolling the dugout and the club even giving out free football tops to fans. Thank you for taking Paulinho from Spurs.
Celebrating the win, when they were quiet you could hear a pin drop but when they got going it was quite the racket
Yamashita got sent off but with both Forlan and Kakitani now looking increasingly dangerous in the J. League we left Nagoya with three points, excellent result. Later that day Spurs would lose to West Ham after Kaboul got sent off in an eerily similar fashion to Yamashita but Spurs showed no fight or confidence at all. I want the Premier League season to finish soon, which it will on Sunday, West Ham have beaten us three times this season.
A proper footballing lesson here. Everything Guangzhou Evergrande did was so much better than us. Amazing to see Marcelo Lippi in Yanmar Stadium but that was pretty depressing to watch. Particularly as I realised one of their best players on the night, Alessandro Diamanti, is ex-West Ham.
This is the AFC Champions League!
Incredible number of away fans
A big flag for a big occasion
Elkeson's penalty
Popovic and Lippi
Final Score
We should have known we were in trouble when a World Cup winning manager looks on!
Love didn't conquer all, although he did score the first after a ridiculous penalty decision. So, however unlikely it seems, we made it through!Sakemoto was dropped and our formation was altered but ultimately I don't think that made a huge difference as two nice finishes from two players we expect to produce the goods got us the points we needed to squeeze through to the knockout stage. Jin-Hyeon gave us a scare as he fell very awkwardly but played on and he and the rest of the defense proved too strong for Shandong to get back in the game. Enjoy the video and happy days! Marcelo Lippi's Guangzhou Evergrande awaits us in early May. A Kansai Derby awaits us tomorrow back in J1.
