Sunday, May 20, 2007

Always outnumbered, Always outgunned: Verdy vs Shonan


When I first saw the name of this man in Verdy's starting 11, a sense of fear and dread overcame me. I was almost ready to leave the stadium. My views on Shigenori Hagimura have been well documented. When I later saw that the new formation would be 3-5-2 with Fukuda and Hattori playing a midfield role and Hagimura as the lone man in the middle, I thought, finally.....Verdy will lose 12-0 and the embarassment will be so great, Ramos will be on his way out........I'll stay for this, some cute girls are around me, it's a beautiful day as always at historic Kokuritsu and I got nothing else to do.
Well dear readers, the end of world is upon us.....Hell has truly frozen over and pigs are circling my roof in majestic flight................
I thought Shigenori Hagimura was the best player on the field.
Oh, I realize that Shinya Yoshihara stood on his head on a couple of beautiful saves and Hulk was the most dangerous player on the field, practically spoon feeding Tsuyoshi Yoshitake his first goal in a Verdy uniform. For my money, Hagimura performed the most consistent performance, consistently shutting down the runs by Adiel and the rest of the dangerous Shonan mids. Seriously, the only dangerous chances by Bellmare were handed to them by the inept officiating who ran Kensuke Fukuda on a foul second yellow call. 52 minutes of man down footy and for the lions share Verdy looked like the more dangerous squad.
And Hagimura was the anchor. Part of me died just saying that.
Surprisingly, the team looked far more effective with the lumbering Diego up top and Hiroyama dropped back into his more natural role of midfielder after Fukuda left.
I won't judge the squad by this performance harshly considering the ref wanted to decide it and failed......I will just applaud Ramos and the squad for a gutsy performance that was light years away from the disgrace of early May.
I still worry about a 3-5-2 with an erratic keeper and a central defender who is putrid but for today I will give the permed devil his due......his gameplan worked to near perfection. Next game is against Fukuoka on Wednesday......I won't be there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Decent game eh!! Long range was all Bellmare had, Yoshihara earned his money with the double save this week after last weeks giveaway. I would like to know how many goals we have scored this year in which Hulk has either not put the ball in himself or layed it on for someone else to tap in??!! He is our only guy going forward!! As you said,again he was the pick of the bunch.6 points off third place doesn`t seem a huge margin....also the weather put a few on the gate I reckon.11,000 is a decent showing for us.I think the Sunday game idea is a winner so far.Ive no idea about comparisons for last year but I don`t remember getting that many too often last year.That is also a deal higher than some of the crowds we used to get in J1!! Shonan had a decent following which I guess accounts for some of the extra.But overall well done us for getting over 10,000!!
Lets hope we can get some momentum going,banish thoughts of the losing streak and try and stretch this unbeaten run a bit further. 2 wins and an away draw v the second place team isn`t bad in my book. The Perm has been down but he`s not out!! I love it!! just when you think we are the worst team in Japan out come the Boys and prove we are not quite the worst team!! Its never boring with all things Green!!