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.
A very exciting but annoying game due to the fact that we should have walked this but the players weren't bothered to impress new manager Marco Pezzaiuoli and made hard work of knocking Veertien Kuwana out. Yamaguchi started after returning from the World Cup. It looked like Veertien would pull off an upset for large periods but I wonder how good they really are or whether we were just poor on the day. Jin-Hyeon was lucky not to see red and give away a penalty even though the Veertien player was looking for it. U18 player Masaki Sakamoto replaced Sakemoto at half time and saved us with two goals in extra time. For anyone wondering "Veertien" means 14 in Dutch. The Kuwana kit is similar to the Oranje one so is their name Cruyff inspired? Partly, it could also be because there are 11 players plus 3 subs and additionally Kuwana has a population of 140,000. So plenty of good reasons there then. To be fair a look their fixture list shows them facing a team called "Black Kitty". This win means we will face Kataller Toyama in the next round in August so I'll let you know what Kataller means then.
Kincho is no longer "Awaycist" as we have added proper seats to the grassy knoll that used to welcome visitors
In good spirits as usual despite a frustrating evening
Not our usual type of performance in Europe but that's all we needed to beat AC Milan, the current league leaders in Serie A! Great stuff, COYS! Because AC Milan are my team in Italy and as a reminder of just some of their past glories here's Capello's Milan vs Cruyff's Barcelona back in the 1994 Final. Great game, legendary team. Better than the current Barcelona team? We will never know.
Cerezo's next opponents are newly promoted Kashiwa Reysol who won their first game back in J1 3-0 last week so will be on a high. It will be interesting to see if Culpi tinkers with the starting 11 for this game. The game will be played in Kincho Stadium. A bit of nostalgic trivia, Reysol can boast having once fielded Brazilian star striker Careca and later Bulgarian Hristo Stoichkov. Of their current crop of imports Brazilian midfielder Leandro Domingues is a key player and he got on the scoresheet last week. Come on Cerezo!
