That's Better!!!!!!!

After a demolition at the hands of Kashiwa, Verdy needed a nice sorbet to cleanse the pallete. What better salve than the blue and green mermen of mighty Shonan.

Out went Hagimura, Out went Ishikawa, Ze Luis sat with injury, Mizuhara wasn't even allowed in the stadium...

In came Ichiyanagi after his U-21 snub....Taisei Fujita lined up along side him with Togawa and Kaimoto.

Tomisawa and Sugawara filled in the middle with Ohashi and Marcus. Silva and Hiroyama were up top. As almost always, Takagi took his place between the pipes.

9 minutes in, Ohashi scored giving Verdy a much needed fast start. The start of the second half saw Tomisawa put in number two. Silva got on the board 20 minutes later. Only a late goal by Bellmare after a mad rush made the score closer than it really was. 3-1

Around the League

Well, my preseason pick, Consadole Sapporo is now 21 points out of first place with 7 games to play. So unless the top 3 teams lose every point between now and the last game of the season, it's over for them.

Ehime pulled off a nice little ambush on now third place Kashiwa Reysol. Going into the final stretch, it is a three team race for #1 with Vegalta having an outside shot at stealing the playoff spot

1. Vissel Kobe 80 pts
2. Yokohama FC 79 pts
3. Kashiwa Reysol 78 pts -1 game
4. Vegalta Sendai 68 pts -1 game
5. Sagan Tosu 64 pts
6. TOKYO VERDY 1969 62pts
7. Consadole Sapporo 59 pts

Look for matchups on the 11th between Kashiwa and Kobe and Yokohama Kashiwa to sort everything out.

J SOCCER

Never got around to doing this and I should of but Alan Gibson runs a little site down south called J Soccer which covers Japan soccer in general and Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe in particular.

Anyhow, I'm still a little pissed about his glee over my poor little United States squad getting dryhumped by the world in June's little German Soiree but it's a good site and I reccomend it.

http://www.jsoccer.com