We are in the draw for the next round of the Emperor's Cup! Cerezo 2 - 0 Jubilo Iwata

New manager Yuji Okuma started with a win against Jubilo Iwata who are 3rd in J2 and as we are currently 3rd from bottom in J1 that should make us pretty evenly matched right? Just over 4000 people turned up for this in a stadium that was used in a World Cup so you can imagine it looked a bit odd. Kusukami started and showed what he can bring to the team by setting up Minamino who finished well for the first. Ryo Nagai worked tirelessly all night and was rewarded with a goal he took thanks to his speedy footwork and thinking. Our injured captain Yamaguchi wasn't missed as we got our first meaningful win in a long time. Everyone put a decent shift in tonight compared to our performances in the league. I'm hoping Okuma doesn't feel pressured to bring back any big names, match-fit or not, for the next game on Saturday against 6th place Kashiwa Reysol. Kagawa has returned to Dortmund recently but in bigger news Mitch Nichols quietly joined Perth Glory on loan after a ridiculously wasted (first?) spell in Osaka. 

The unusually sparsely populated I4

This is what a world cup stadium looks like for a dry Wednesday night Emperor's Cup game in Osaka

Someone's sitting there mate

The acoustics are great in Yanmar Stadium so their efforts were heard

Lonely jobs, all of them, cameraman (or woman?), manager and linesman (or woman or assistant referee?) 

New gaffer Yuji Okuma gets nervous as he is surrounded...by drink bottles lined up and ready to spring the offside trap

Related articles

• Cerezo win first game under new coach to reach Emperor's Cup quarters (japantimes.co.jp)
• Sports › Cerezo fires second manager this season (japantoday.com)
• Holders Reysol march into Nabisco Cup semis (japantimes.co.jp)

Cerezo Osaka 1 - 1 Omiya Ardija

This was played on the public holiday now known as Showa day (my previous post was wrong, apologies, Greenery Day is now May 4th) which encourages reflection on Emperor Hirohito's reign while also giving those on the extreme right an excuse to blast anything they like from the loudspeakers in their usually black vans in various places around Japan. So Omiya Ardija, despite the poor showing in their last home game, could have left with three points were it not for an injury time equaliser from Kenyu Sugimoto. Takeda started in place of Jin-Hyeon and he was given no help from his defense for the goal we conceded from a corner. An odd game, but again the type we should be winning to live up to our (unwarranted in my opinion) hype. It should have been a nice game to try something different, aside from the keeper change, but at least we got a point which is better than the same fixture last season. The superb Toyota Stadium in Nagoya awaits next, no predictions from me, and I have to mention for those in Japan once again J Sports has a feast of Premier League football on Saturday with Spurs vs West Ham first, followed by a chance to see Ryan Giggs as Shinji Kagawa's manager, and then the highest paid sports team in the world AKA Man City. Until then please watch the goals from yesterday as many times as you can. I think you can get to at least double figures if you are committed. I should have known better to be confident about the game yesterday as the squirrels usually seem to enjoy playing against us. The fact that some of our fans booed (again) at the end was mentioned in the Japanese media. Cheer up and enjoy the ride! Unless we get relegated...

   

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. 

 

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

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Cerezo Osaka

Kawasaki had some good chances and Jin-Hyeon recovered well after he's become something of a youtube sensation due to his error last week. But he produced a solid display including a couple of quality saves from stinging shots, one of which ended with him hitting the post, dedication. In the end that was enough to see us take the three points. We scored another goal from a very similar corner to our last game where Kiyotake was able to head in from the 6-yard box. Our second came from a nice build up and Kurata finished the move well. Also well done to whoever works on set-pieces in training, we saw some threatening and carefully though out free-kicks the kind of which I have never seen before. Perhaps they do this stuff in Brazil all the time but I haven't seen it. But the three points takes us further away from the bottom which is important for Cerezo fans after we finished 3^rd last season, it's always a worry we might get relegated! Our first half display was too god for Frontale who picked things up in the second half but couldn't get nything out of the game. A good turnout and atmosphere for the game which included a minute silence for the recently deceased Naoki Matsuda. Terrible news. Our fans chanted his name after the silence was over and had a banner to pay our respects. Kiyotake's good form continiued against Korea on Wednesday in Sapporo's full international between the two neighbouring countries. He got a couple of assists while Kagawa got two goals. Kim Bo-Kyung also came off the bench for Korea who were surprisingly poor. Next up it's Osaka derby time!

Kawasaki's stadium, in the middle of nowhere

Cerezo fans' message to Naoki Matsuda

Another innovative free kick

Kim Bo-Kyung delivers a corner

Our away support bring the noise and colour

Still no home win, Inui scores but will it be his last for Cerezo?

An entertaining 2-3 loss to a strong Nagoya team. Inui came off the bench to score our second after Pimpao got the first for Cerezo. Jin-Hyeon had to face another Kennedy penalty straight after saving the first when the referee deemed a retake was needed. This was Nagoya's third of the night. Not for the first time this season the home fans (and Culpi) got peeved with the officiating.

Kennedy gets another penalty chance

Culpi was restrained then stormed off

How many games does Inui have left for Cerezo? Will he be a great loss?

Inui started away to Albirex Niigata but it took an effort from sub Sakemoto in injury time to salvage a point for us in Niigata, 1-1. Still finding it hard to believe the scouts think he's that good but it looks like Inui (4 goals in J1 last season) will be heading to Europe and the Bundelsiga looks the most likely destination. Supposedly his contract has a similar 350k Euro release clause that saw the now highly valued Shinji Kagawa leave for Dortmund. Surely the outcome won't be the same, I expect to see a fair number of bemused Bundesliga fans when they see him in action, even if he is cheap as. Not sure if he'll be starting, on the bench, or left out of the matchday squad (hot inside gossip ahoy!) for Kashiwa Reysol's visit to Osaka which will also see a return to Nagai Stadium this Saturday.

Cerezo and Rodrigo Pimpao's first goal in the ACL

Inui with the cross and Pimpao with the finish, Kagawa celebrates!

Cerezo 2 - 1 Arema - Pimpao bags a brace on his debut!

Pimpao celebrates his second 

The I4 section of Nagai Stadium

Special guest appearance

We didn't play well. Inui set up Pimpao's header for the first goal and Pimpao also finished well from a fortunate free kick. We conceded a penalty for handball but Arema didn't play well either. Bo-Kyung Kim showed some nice touches and hit the crossbar. Perhaps I've been watching too much Premier League recently but I think we'll struggle against Gamba this Saturday if we don't improve our performance. I'm a little scared to be honest. Inui did little to remind people why he is capped at full international level despite his assist. At least Pimpao couldn't have done more, he only had two good chances and he finished them. Limping ex-Cerezo star Kagawa Shinji, now of Borussia Dortmund, gave an interview at half-time which was a nice distraction from a pretty poor game attended by just over 10000 people which was a disappointing number for our first game of the season.

Arema fans adding to the numbers while the stewards make sure there's no trouble

Transfer and injury update!

We have signed Rodrigo Pimpao an loan from Vasco da Gama. Although any player can be made to look good on youtube highlights he does look like he could do a job in J1 for us. While looking for the video you can watch here I also came across another of his youtube videos where he fractures his arm. It's horrible, so no link, I can't erase the memory of watching it! Don't do it is my advice. Spurs meanwhile have signed Steven Pienaar who was pretty cheap as his contract is up this summer but it's difficult to judge how often he will play. Time is running out for Spurs to sign a much needed striker or indeed offload one, Robbie Keane to Cerezo perhaps? Anyway enjoy some Brazilian magic from the new Cerezo frontman. In other news Shinji Kagawa is out for the rest of the season by the looks of it. After a couple of goals in the Asian Cup for Japan and attracting the attention of Man U too. Don't do it Shinji, stay with BVB!

Lost in translation or Judas? What will our squad look like when the season starts?

Adriano has signed for Gamba. What happened there? There were rumours about this a few months ago but it seemed that he wasn't willing to make the switch back then. But... check this out. It's not Sol going to Arsenal... but it's pretty bad. Our top goalscorer last year, he got four in the last game of the season helping us get to the Asian Champions League. Although he did manage to get sent off when we were playing Gamba. Also it looks like Inui wants to follow Kagawa and Ienaga (who was on loan from Gamba) to Europe and has been linked with FC Cologne.

Bundesliga BVB the calm before the snow storm

Get your scarves here

Kagawa in Frankfurt

Is the scoreboard OK there?

Commerzbank Arena

Took a trip to see Shinji play in Germany, he got subbed in the second half, Dortmund lost, got stuck in Franfurt because of the snow and Lufthansa lost our luggage...Dortmund fans were great though. We were in the standing section and they were serving hot mulled wine in very large cups.