Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Verdy suffers a torn ACL

Honestly, I'm reporting blind here.........no TV for the game and I don't have cable. I did find a site that had the Gamba ACL game on the net and they let one slip away. Anyhow let me give you the lineups and stats first-----

The Verdy site has 7 df for Ulsan so I'm only going to give the Verdy lineup for now

VERDY

GK Mizuhara (Takagi is definetely number 2)
DF Yanagisawa
DF Togawa
DF Hagimura
DF Sugawara (MF?)
MF Ono
MF Kanazawa
MF Hiroyama
MF Anailson
FW Basilio
FW Ichiyanagi

Bench
GK Takagi
DF Fujita
DF Dedimar
DF Uemura
MF Ohashi
MF Nagai
MF Kina
FW Iio

First impressions.......I didn't understand the thinking here. I get not burning out the starters and resting key members but the ones he pulled are questionable. Basilio is pushing 35 and he's supposed to be a speed option. Ohashi on the other hand is 25, had a great game against Vortis and has ACL experience from his days in Yokohama. Why sit him? I'm also a little baffled with the keeper choice...........is Takagi taking a turn on Saturday against Shonan? Is there a rotation?
It seems like Ramos couldn't make up his mind on whether or not to go for it.

The first half gave reason for hope as Verdy held Ulsan to a scoreless draw going into the locker room. Shots were even and Verdy had a slight edge on free kicks. They were getting tagged on the offsides calls and Kanazawa and Hagimura both got tagged for yellow cards.

Ulsan finally broke through with a score from Cho San Kyu in the 57th minute. 14 minutes later Leandro Machado put one in the net to finish the scoring at 2-0. Making brief appearances for the buzzards were Kazunori Iio, Nagai, and Fujita.

Final Thoughts.......Judging the quality of the opponent and the fact that Verdy hasn't really been together as a squad for very long, I'm not disappointed with the result. Judging from the stats, Verdy didn't embarass themselves out there and going far in the ACL might be worse than being eliminated early. Maybe they can catch Ulsan sleeping in Korea and pull off a huge upset so it's not over yet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just thought Id let you know that the match was actually televised, on BS Asahi. They probably should have resosted the temptation. Im sure the videos of 250 Verdy supporters and 20 or 30 Ulsan fans "filling" National Stadium will be a bit of an embarassmeht.

Incidentally, the "mystery striker" was #39 - Saito, not Ichiyanagi.
Maybe the ACL scorers have never seen a number as high as 39 before, and thought it was a typo?

-Matsu-

SMB said...

Yeah should have been more clear on the "not having cable" comment......I paid form y TV once, I don't want to do it again. No sattelite.

Misread the name on Verdy's website.......30 was definetely the number they had.

Saito was an interesting choice........he has a good amount of experience in China and Brazil. I don't understand sitting Ohashi though.