Saturday, December 09, 2006

The season is over but the news is not......

Verdy had a practice game against 4th place Kanto Daigaku league squad Hosei University. In a game that was 2 periods of 45 minutes and a third period of 30 minutes, the squad fell 5-4

Goals were scored by Saito, Nagai, Hiroyama, and Mihara.

Hosei was led by FW Inoue who put them up early and gave Verdy fits all game.

The Fallen Hero returns from the Doha Campaign

Yugo Ichiyanagi returned today from Doha. Ichiyanagi notched a goal in the final game against North Korea. The squad finished second in their group and failed to advance to the knockout rounds. It should be noted that Japan went with a purely U-21 squad in a U-23 competiton. Disappointing result for the young samurai.

Found a new blog today

F2FF (From the second floor of Fukuari) is an English blog based on the exploits of JEF Chiba Ichihara. Updated often, it's been around for awhile but slipped through the cracks. Good stuff!

http://blog.drecom.jp/f2ff

Off-topic

Speaking of JEF chiba, rumors abound about the impending exodus of National team midfielder Yuki Abe. Nagoya Grampus Eight, Urawa Reds, and FC Tokyo all have been linked to bids for the star middleman. By my count, if Urawa is able to steal him away they would have the lions share of National team players...........

Tulio
Santos
Hasebe
Suzuki
Ono
Tsuboi
Tsuzuki
ABE?

Nagoya has also been linked with former Verdy man and National team player Yuji Nakazawa. The big blow to Verdy though would be if the gasmen snatched him up. The return of headman Hara could see the perennial underacheivers finally challenge for top of the table with the addition of Abe. They will still be godawful to watch when they take on Omiya but they will have a ton of talent. And that would show how far Verdy needs to go.

My guess is that he ends up in Urawa though........and Soma will fall a bit further back.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard the rumour about Abe too - is there a more loathsome team than the Japanese Manchester United? Soma should come to Omiya to keep Daigo company and to set up chances for Morita to comically miss!

Anonymous said...

Can`t see the problem myself...part and parcel of football.Its up to everyone else to challenge them,develop their own talent and knock them off their perch.The team has the most supporters and well done to them for achieving it and as earlier stated when they were shite in J2,the fans were still there in huge numbers. I wish Verdy had 30,000 guaranteed every week,pick of the choice players and were up there challenging.Touch of green eyed monster?? In my case 100 per cent yes!!

SMB said...

Part of it is jealousy, part of it is frustration.....Kawasaki Frontale played the most exiting football this year but could hardly get a sniff in the media compared to Urawa. This would have been a banner year for them to build up their base with mostly homegrown guys but there was no exposure. Urawa is getting the lions share of media, media equals advertisement, advertisement equals sponsorship and we end up with one bloated team and a bunch of minnows. It's like the Tokyo juggernaut in the 60's (Yomiuri Giants baseball). I'll write more on the blog.