Showing posts with label Serie A. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serie A. Show all posts

Sunday, 3 April 2011

Weekend roundup and Tuesday's Champions League double!

Spurs ruthlessly drew 0-0 at Wigan to remain in 5th and out of contention for a Champions League spot for now. Lots of live Premier League games this weekend on J-Sports, here's hoping Man City slip up tonight. Here's an interesting interview with Sandro one of our star Champions League performers. Spurs play Real Madrid away on Tuesday with Bale likely to be fit but our usual injury problems at centre back.. Real lost at the Bernabeu this weekend which was, amazingly, Jose Mourinho's first home loss for 9 years! Higuain also returned after a four month absence in this game. Elsewhere in Europe an important result in Italy's Serie A with the Milan derby finishing 3-0 in AC Milan's favour.
Our Korean opponents

Japan were scheduled to make their second appearance since 1999 in the Copa America this July but the JFA are now considering what do after the disaster. Cerezo take on Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors in Nagai Stadium this Tuesday. Jeonbuk are previous winners of the ACL in 2006 and scored four without reply in their last ACL game in Indonesia against Arema. They look like the toughest team we will face in this group. In world football news the Asian football boss Bin Hammam will challenge Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency.

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Gambare Nippon Charity match in Nagai

Zaccheroni's JFA (Samurai Blue)  beat Stojkovic's J-League (Team as One) 2-1 last night. A free kick from Endo and a calm finish from Okazaki in the first half followed by a crowd pleasing wonderfully taken goal by the Japanese (44 year old) legend Kazuyoshi 'King Kazu' Miura. All the proceeds from this match go towards helping those affected by the earthquake/tsunami on March 11th.
A moment's silence
A sold out Nagai Stadium









In other news England drew with a vibrant Ghana side 1-1, the 8th most expensive player ever, Andy Carroll, scoring for England before Sunderland striker Asamoah Gyan scored an injury time equaliser. But of course the main story is about Japan with many supporters at Nagai Stadium donating plus the magic of seeing a Japanese superstar footballer scoring in front of an adoring crowd. Gambare Nippon indeed. Anyone watching Football Italia many years ago might remember this from Kazu while he was playing for Genoa in Serie A.

Saturday, 5 February 2011

The January transfer window

So Harry Redknapp (or just Levy?) bid for a number of strikers, Aguerro, Llorente, Carroll, Negredo, Forlan, and even midfielder Charlie Adam and utility man Phil Neville. This despite Luis Fabiano having been the most likely mover. At the same time he loaned out Robbie Keane to his first love, West Ham, he scored of course in his first game there, while our three remaining strikers have struggled in the league. We got stuffed by Fulham, down to ten men for some time, but thanks to Peter Crouch's 2nd league goal of the season beat Blackburn. The similarites between Peter and Cerezo's Rui Komatsu are either endless or non-existent depending on whether you are aware of either of them by the way. Anyway Harry seems to have given up on a Champions League qualifying spot although he did say we weren't in the market for any more players before our last minute let downs so let's see what he really means later. The Torres transfer shows the importance of Champions League football for world class players which might be worrying for us Spurs fans (we do have some world class talent) depending on the final table come the end of this season. Torres vs Liverpool and Adriano vs Cerezo on their debut games for their respective new clubs, nice. Chelsea just reminding everyone that their recent success is largely due to Roman's checkbook and fax machine (both still heavily involved in football but largely redundant elsewhere). Mercenaries, outcasts or boyhood supporters, only time will tell. At least we have shown we have cash to spend unlike Arsenal who probably do have money but Wenger knows best. This window around £225 million was spent in England compared to about £30 million last year. Hungry, talented players available for relatively cheap seem to be the best option. Look a the list (link below) and think about how many of those players did not/have not yet prove/proven their worth. With this in mind perhaps Juventus want BAE? Tottenham make the British transfer top ten list thanks to Dimitar Berbatov, outgoing, maybe we could be on the incoming list but if we really meant it we would have started the bidding earlier, not a problem. Then came Andy (when's he due back in court?) Carroll. He is now, quite ridiculously, the 8th most expensive football player of all time! Does that seem right? Yuto Nagatomo went on loan to Inter from Cesena who got Davide Santon in return which has been dominating the sports news here in Japan, rightly so. Pienaar has recovered from his fellow newcomer South African mistaking his head for the ball to be available for the game against Bolton at the Lane later. Thank you J-Sports for showing the game on J-Sports 2! COYS

Friday, 4 February 2011

Sumo scandal to increase football gates? I hope so...

Err...it must have been the calculator.
The whole story can be viewed here but I'm sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen in the J-League. Plus match-fixing isn't illegal in sumo? Keep sumo alive but football is the way forward...unless it's in Italy's Serie A/B/C where the sumo-style shenanigans wouldn't be worth mentioning. The 11 million project is the attendance target for the J-League. The president of Omiya Ardija resigned last year due to...attendance-fixing, which to be fair isn't as serious as match fixing, he didn't understand the rules of recording his clubs attendance (how complicated could it be)!