It's been a tough week for the citizens of Shimizu.
Faced with the indignity of not one S-Pulse player making the J. Allstars team, football fans awoke
last Tuesday to a sizeable earthquake shattering the peace of their sleepy town.
It'll be a different noise rocking the port city this evening, with all 20,330 tickets snapped up
for tonight's "Orange Derby" against high-flying Albirex Niigata.
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"It's Groundhog Day!"
There's no sign of Punxsutawney Phil, but Nagoya Grampus coach Dragan Stojkovic must be checking
his calendar in disbelief as the Aichi-based side prepare to face FC Tokyo at Ajinomoto Stadium for
the second time in three days.
Naohiro Ishikawa looks set to play the Ned Ryerson role to the Serbian coach's Phil Connors, with
Ishikawa causing opponents plenty of irritation with some career-best form.
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If there's one team that can stop the Kashima Antlers juggernaut from steam-rolling to a third
successive J. League title, it's Kawasaki Frontale.
The Kanagawa side geared up for an epic showdown with Kashima on Sunday by beating Gamba Osaka 1-0
at Todoroki Stadium in a rescheduled Round 10 fixture overnight.
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Australia finished top of Group A in Asian World Cup qualifying after beating Japan 2-1 in front of
69,238 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Tim Cahill was the hero for the Socceroos, scoring twice in the second half after Japan defender
Marcus Tulio Tanaka had given his side a half-time lead.
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Looking more like a ward of hospital patients than a squad of professional footballers, Japan
arrived in Melbourne with seemingly one goal in mind. Forget the three qualifying points on offer
from their World Cup qualifier against the Socceroos, Takeshi Okada's men appeared more determined
to avoid contracting swine flu as they disembarked in the sporting capital of Australia.
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"Socceroo cover-up" reads the June 14 headline of Sydney's widely circulated
Sunday
Telegraph, with the round ball game earning rare front page coverage from the News
Limited mouthpiece.
It's not for exploits on the pitch that football is making headlines in Australia, but rather for
the allegation that Everton midfielder Tim Cahill was expelled from a Kings Cross nightclub last
week for drunk and disorderly behaviour.
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Japan will send an understrength squad to Melbourne to face Australia on June 17, with Celtic
midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura not making the trip as he nurses a groin injury.
Nakamura is joined on the sidelines by influential Gamba Osaka playmaker Yasuhito Endo, while VfL
Wolfsburg representatives Makoto Hasebe and Yoshito Okubo have also pulled out, as has in-form VVV
Venlo midfielder Keisuke Honda.
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Japan warmed up for their World Cup qualifier against Uzbekistan in Tashkent on June 6 with two
crushing Kirin Cup victories to win the three-team tournament in front of their home fans.
Japan thrashed Chile 4-0 on May 27 in front of 43,531 fans at a sold-out Nagai Stadium in Osaka,
with Shimizu S-Pulse front man Shinji Okazaki helping himself to a brace.
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Bleary-eyed and weary, a legion of football fans shuffles through the night in their warmest of
slippers and clutching at coffee cups.Â
Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere, where watching live European football requires the stamina of
Paul Scholes and the fancy-footwork of Lionel Messi - if only to avoid tripping over the cat
slumbering peacefully on the living room floor.
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The Kashima Antlers juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down as the Ibaraki giants beat Gamba Osaka
1-0 in front of a capacity crowd of 19,092 at Expo '70 Stadium in Osaka.
Former Japan international Koji Nakata stepped into midfield in place of the suspended Mitsuo
Ogasawara, and the ex-FC Basel star promptly scored the only goal of the game after just sixteen
minutes.
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Like it's much-maligned English cousin, the League Cup in Japan is facing an image crisis. That's
nothing new for J. League officials, who for years have struggled with the competing interests of
Japan's biggest clubs.
A revamped Asian Champions League has brought the League Cup issue to a head.
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The national team may never sit atop the FIFA world rankings, while most European fans remain
blissfully ignorant of the colourful crowds that pack into grounds to witness one of the most
evenly contested leagues in the world. But there's no denying that Japanese football is unique.
The J.
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Kashima Antlers moved back to the top of the J. League standings following a hard-fought 1-0 win
over Vissel Kobe last night.
In a full round of midweek fixtures, Kashima took advantage of Urawa's 2-2 draw away at Shimizu
S-Pulse to leapfrog the Saitama giants in the standings.
Imposing defender Daiki Iwamasa scored the only goal of the game, powering home a header to
register Kashima's 1000th league goal in the process.
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Twelve games played. Seven defeats. Four draws. One win.
That's the record A-League clubs currently hold against their Japanese counterparts in the Asian
Champions League, with Australian teams struggling to hold their own against the might of the
Japanese game.
The trend continued this week when Central Coast Mariners lost for the second straight time to
Kawasaki Frontale, while Newcastle Jets missed a penalty in succumbing to Nagoya Grampus at home.
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Following their uninspiring performance in a 1-1 draw with Newcastle Jets in the AFC Champions
League in midweek, Nagoya Grampus rounded out a disappointing week by going down 1-0 to Urawa Reds
in front of 32,435 fans at Toyota Stadium.
17-year-old midfielder Genki Haraguchi was the hero for the Reds - coming off the bench to replace
the injured Tatsuya Tanaka after just 22 minutes, before blasting home his first ever top flight
goal two minutes before the break.
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When Alex Bellos kicked off his critically acclaimed history of Brazilian football "Futebol: The
Brazilian Way Of Life" with a chapter on Faroese football, there were no doubt eyebrows raised at
the bold choice of starting from one of football's most remote outposts.
Yet if Bellos introduced a host of readers to a league brimming with club-names seemingly borrowed
from the dregs of an alphabet soup, "Ronaldson's Directory of Faroese Football" goes one step
further.
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Has there ever been a more pointless merger than the one between Yokohama Marinos and Yokohama
Flügels?br /br /English speakers certainly seem to consider the merger irrelevant. It's rare to
see a non-Japanese outlet refer to the new entity by its full name – Yokohama F. Marinos.br /br
/But while Japanese football is not exactly sitting atop the upper echelons of the world game, the
merger between Marinos and Flügels has global ramifications.
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Bahrain - the small Arabic state in the middle of the Persian Gulf, is hardly a hotbed of world
football.br /br /With a population of around 1.2 million - almost half of whom are expatriate
foreign workers - it's a state that tends to fly under the radar for much of the western world.br
/br /However, Japan coach Takeshi Okada must be sick of the sight of the Bahraini national team,
with the two teams set to face off for the umpteenth time in Japan's quest to reach a fourth
successive World Cup finals.
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divThe Kansai derby between Kyoto Sanga and Gamba Osaka may have featured an intriguing clash of
Koreans at Nishikyogoku Stadium on Sunday, but referee Nobutsugu Murakami stole the show with a
performance that had Gamba coach Akira Nishino spitting chips./divdivbr //divdiv"No J. League
match should ever be refereed the way it was," an exasperated Nishino claimed - after seeing
his side earn five yellow cards and concede a dubious penalty against their regional rivals.
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The shocks continued in the J. League last weekend, with Albirex Niigata beating Kashima Antlers on
Sunday afternoon to snatch a share of the J. League lead.br /br /It was a slightly disappointing
crowd of 37,808 that turned out at Big Swan Stadium, but the stay-away fans who preferred the
comforts of home to the cold climes of Big Swan missed a famous victory for the home side.
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It may have been a record-breaking opening across the way in South Korea, but the J. League proved
that it can also pack them in on a drama-charged opening weekend.
The Sunday fixtures saw Omiya Ardija and Shimizu S-Pulse grind out a scoreless draw, while Kyoto
Sanga beat Vissel Kobe 1-0 in an early Kansai derby.
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The Fuji Xerox Super Cup between reigning J. League champions Kashima Antlers and Emperor's Cup
holders Gamba Osaka kicks off the seventeenth season of professional football in Japan on
Saturday.
The two heavyweights of the Japanese game will meet at the National Stadium in Tokyo, and Kashima
will be looking to erase the memories of last year's controversial defeat when referee Masaaki
Iemoto took centre stage - sending off three players, awarding a dubious penalty and ordering two
spot-kicks retaken during a penalty shoot-out that ended in a pitch invasion.
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If Ernesto "Che" Guevara was alive today, he would find Japan a maddening place to launch
a revolution.
It's not because he polarises opinion in The Land Of The Rising Sun. There's no debate over whether
he was a freedom fighter or blood-thirsty mercenary on the streets of Tokyo - most young Japanese
are familiar with his face only because it adorns the tackiest of designer handbags in the
capital's upmarket boutiques.
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