An eyewitness account of the Montedio Muddle

Once again, entertaining poster and all-around good guy, Nick has an eyewitness account of yesterday's game.......without further ado:

nick has left a new comment on your post "100 with a bullet: Montedio Yamagata vs VERDY":

What a cracker!! Verdy in a can!! If someone wanted to sell the Verdy brand and what it means (apart from when they thrashed everyone at the start of the j league) they could do a lot worse than bottle todays game,stick it in a time capsule, dig it up in 500 years and they would still have 90 minutes of "Pure Verdy". After the durge that has been served up in the 3 out of the first 4 games in J2 (Bellmare game not withstanding even though we lost) todays game was an absolute treat!! Verdy were still tieing their boots up and checking their shinnies by the time Leandro had been granted permission to cut through the Verdy "defence" in the first minute.Nice goal if you are a Montedio fan, horror show if you bleed Green. A couple of neat passes a shimmy to bamboozle him and "The Cat" was picking the ball out the back of the net after a neat finish from Leandro.Oh dear!! Nevermind I thought, these lot are bottom of the league and shite, 89 minutes to go we`ll do `em. Well in the end we did but, Jesus what a way to do it!! After the goal we had some good possesion for about 10 minutes which culminated in the lively Saito spurning a great opportunity, through on the keeper to the left side of the box with a defender bearing down on him, keeper came out, he tried to flick it with the outside of his right boot to hit the bottom corner but went narrowly wide. After this, we absolutely fell to pieces.....Montedio were winning every 50/50 our game went long ball to nowhere,passing going nowhere. Montedio were absolutely dictating the game and looking like Brazil in comparison to 11 blokes who`d just met for a few beers, found some Green t shirts, saw a few lads in stripey tops on down the park and asked em for a kick about. Everybodys favourite Captain Ono was in sparkling form for the second goal. Verdy were on the touch line trying to push into the Montedio goal, forwards all waiting for a decent cross...The Boy Wonder is there..he feints one way...feints the other and......treads on the ball, falls over and the Montedeio defender can`t believe his luck!! He sprints clear with the ball from the edge of the 18 yard box knocks it up to Leandro who is still only on the half way line,Leandro then proceeds to beat 3 of the lamest "tackles" Ive ever seen and slots it past "The Cat" for number two! The Mighty Greens 2-0 down against bottom of the league!! At this point the wife heard the finer points of my tactical opinions, forcefully put and went to bed. Still,10 minutes to go before half time, if we could somehow get one back before the break, maybe we`d get back in the second half. This was a really open game with a good deal of chances at either end, unfortunately neither goalie was made to work much as most shots were either scuffed or ended up on the top of one of the beautiful looking mountains that the stadium is set in. Anyway, on a fast break from Verdy, somebody (dunno who) knocked a high ball over to the far post, Saito headed a pefect downward header into the path of Hiramoto who angled himself just right to avoid the oncoming defender and sidefoot the ball into the goal beyond the diving keeper. 2-1 we were back in it!! (unless we were as crap as we had been for the entire 45 minutes previously). Just before the break Saito (again) had another good opportunity, he had got himself into a great shooting position just inside the box and he seemed to snatch at it unfortunately and it went just over. Then came the second half...what a turnaround !! this is not to say by anymeans we dominated or hammered the opposition, but we certainly gave a good account of ourselves. Verdy probably got a right shoeing at half time and absolutely desrvedly so, luckily for us the main danger man Leandro got taken off with a leg injury after about 60 odd minutes and this seemed to affect the boys from Yamagata. Not long after, the Gods of football looked down on Kazuki Hiramoto and said "Yes My Child, you CAN have a penalty for that" Absolute 50/50 decision, from the TV angle anyway, if he didnt give a penalty I wouldnt have been angry,I certainly didnt leap up from my chair, fist clenched screaming F****in Penalty!!! and the commentater was DEFINATELY surprised at the decision.Long looping ball was crossed in from the touch line for Hiramoto to run on to which he did, and as he went to shoot there seemed to be a "collision" between him and one of the defenders. Result, Verdy penalty and Montedio down to 10 men for professional foul as Hiramoto was the last man. Anyway, as soon as the penalty was awarded. Ramos took off Saito (who looked value today even though he spurned a couple of good chances) and brought on Brasilio whose first touch was to VERY calmy slot the ball past the keeper. So, 2-2 and now the floodgates REALLY opened. For the last 20 minutes it was all Verdy pressure, Brasillio shooting high and wide TWICE to make me shout and curse and think about taking my boots along next time I can go, just in case, Nagai was also guilty of wasting a good opportunity when on the edge of the 6 yard box he decided to blast the ball across the face of goal insted of trying to pick someone out. To put this game into context, before the game I thought we`d win, bottom of the league and all that, after half an hour I was expecting a 4/5-0 defeat,we were that bad, by half time a draw would have been just about stomachable given the way the game had gone up to that point, but by now nothing less than a win was acceptable. Verdy were killing them but chance after chance was going begging, I thought it was gonna be a dissapointing draw.Or maybe worse if "The Cat" had anything to do with it. As i say it was all Verdy after the sending off but after a quick break Montedio knocked in (what looked like)an absolutely harmless ball in from the touchline, "The Cat" had no one and I mean NO ONE near him and he elected to punch the ball but in doing so only half connected with it and it bounced off the front of the post and out to safety, a VERY close call. The man is DODGY with a capital D.Finally, after a lot of messing about and near misses The Boys got what they (didnt really) deserve, The Great One Ramos had decided to take off a defender for the guy with the new worst haircut in the team, see if you can find him,it shouldnt be too hard... Anyway, he supplied a GREAT finish to a short pass at the edge of the box, low into the bottom left hand corner past the keeper. Cracking strike. Verdy had a couple more chances to make the game safe but they wouldnt be Verdy if they managed to do that so.. When the final whistle went there were hugs and cheers all over the pitch from our boys. Probably chinese burns and sleepless nights for the Yamagata boys,life is certainly tough at the bottom. Todays result is all important in the quest for a quick return to the top flight but more importantly (for me anyway) I was reminded of the sheer excitement watching a crap team can bring, I was bemoaning the quality of J2 before and I still think the same but entertainment wise, this was as good anything ive seen here or anywhere else.

My 3 stars today would have to be, Saito (unlucky to be taken off,reckon we`ll be seeing more of him), Hairdo Guy and Hiramoto (never stopped running). My 3 villains thrown into The Tosspot, Ono, shocking for the second goal and got booked for squaring up to an opposing defender in a position of no danger, Tosspot. The Cat for punching a ball that Steven Hawking could have caught against his own goalpost and nearly for one of the worst own goals you would ever have seen,Tosspot.Ramos for making me suffer 30 minutes of horror in the first half before he came to his senses,had a word and sorted it out.Job done, onwards and upwards The Boys.