A partridge amongst the pigeons

This obviously made me chuckle, nice subtitle and he's in pink and navy!

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. 

 

Highlights of the "Invitation Super Match 2013"

This match was against our Thai partner team Bangkok Glass FC as part of the pre-season training camp. It took place on the 7th of February in Thailand and finished 2-1 to us.

The "Glass Rabbits" Badge

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

Emperor's Cup win leads to another Osaka Derby!

Gamba squeezed through past Ossie Ardiles' Machida Zelvia who were rooted to the bottom of J2 for most of the season and find themselves in the JFL (Japan Football League) next season. Shame for Ossie, I was hoping to catch a game to see the Spurs legend but it looks like the Ardiles experiment has backfired for Machida. We knocked four past Shimizu to progress. Special mention goes to “one for the future” (ie. expect him to leave for Germany if he fulfils his potential) 17 year old Takumi Minamino with a great finish for our first and his first senior goal. In the second half Hotaru Yamaguchi made it two connecting with a nice cross from Sakemoto. Kenyu Sugimoto settled the nerves further in an open game with a good finish in off the post. Speed demon Kurata finished things off calmly when he found himself through with only the keeper to beat. The score flattered to deceive but let's see if we can knock out Gamba Suita in the next round. Exciting stuff awaits this Sunday in Nagai Stadium!

Worth watching to see a 17 year old kid's first senior goal.
The Cerezo youth system continues to produce gifted players.

Last game of the season 2 - 2 and we are still in J1!

We could have been relegated if other results conspired against us and we didn't get at least a point against Frontale. So I spent most of the match looking at the updates from other matches in particular those involving our fellow Kansai strugglers Gamba and Vissel Kobe which reminded me of watching football scores on Ceefax (RIP). Others listened to the radio and the more prepared fans were watching streams from these games. As is turned out we could have lost and still stayed up. This is why the celebrations when our equaliser went in from our players seemed a bit over the top to say the least. When it might have mattered we were losing for long periods. When it got to 2 – 2 we were safe anyway. Overall the league campaign wasn't a particularly impressive one with managerial changes and us, inevitably now it seems, losing another star player to a German club in the summer. Takahiro Ogihara is lined up to sign for Nurnberg this winter too. Gamba and Vissel both lost and go down. This means no derby games for us next season and while I was delighted to see Gamba go down most of our fans were just happy to stay up. In fact most of our fans were/are sympathetic to their plight, but I personally enjoyed seeing their supporters crying! The other team at the wrong end of the table on the last day, Albirex Niigata, spanked the newly crowned and possibly hungover champions Hiroshima 4 – 1 ensuring they stay in J1. Here are the highlights and the rather embarrassing celebration scenes when our second equaliser goes in, seriously it looks like we've won the league instead of just avoiding relegation thanks to the results of other teams. On the positive side Tomonobu Yokoyama chipped in with two goals against his old club. At least his wild celebrations were warranted.

HIghlights, OTT celebrations at 02:45!