11 Mar 2009(Wed)

The J League is back. With 31 goals in the seven J1 matches played on the initial Saturday, and a number of surprise scorelines along the way – at least, as surprising as one can hope for in a league predictable only for its unpredictability – the opening weekend of the new season served up an exciting reminder of what we have all been missing throughout the winter months. All in all, affairs on the pitch seem to be shaping up nicely for the launch of a new, English-language service on the Football Japan website.

 

Starting next week, the Football Japan Minutecast will provide a round-up of the latest Japanese football news before and after every weekend of action in the J League and for the national team. The written articles will be available both from the main website and as an e-mail magazine service, while as the ‘cast’ part of the name suggests, we also plan to provide an audio version of the reports in the form of a brief, twice-weekly podcast for you to download.

 

Unfortunately, the system was not quite ready in time to allow my Minutecast feature on the opening day of the season to be published – this, and all subsequent editions will be available in the archive – but my first choice as lead story had been made an easy one by the incredible exploits of Montedio Yamagata. Before the weekend’s games, press attention had inevitably focused on the big match in Kashima, where the Antlers embarked on their mission to record a third straight title with a 2-0 win over the 2006 champions, Urawa Reds. On a personal level, I was obviously pleased that Leandro and Cho Jae-Jin had both got off the mark to help Gamba Osaka win 3-0 away to bogey side JEF United Chiba, and even that Davi had scored twice on his Nagoya Grampus debut against Oita Trinita after I had said last week that his contribution could be key in this year’s title race. However, none of this should be allowed to steal the limelight from the J1 new boys, whose 6-2 thrashing of three-times champions Jubilo Iwata – at the Yamaha Stadium, no less – was perhaps the most explosive introduction of any debuting side in Japanese top flight history.

 

Their manager, Shinji Kobayashi, may have seen it all before in his time with Cerezo Osaka, but despite Yamagata’s relatively comfortable run to second place in J2 last season, this is still a relatively small club that had only once previously challenged for promotion (in 2001) in ten seasons in the J League. Neither they nor their 21-year-old double goalscorer, Yu Hasegawa, who had lived a rather nomadic, goalless existence until joining Montedio last season, could have asked for a more emphatic way to announce their arrival on the big stage against such a name side.

 

Obviously, we should not read too much into a single round of fixtures, and scoring four times in the last fifteen minutes may have added a rather unfair gloss to the scoreline, but the defeat for Jubilo only underlines the fears I expressed two weeks ago for their safety this season. Conceding six goals is a worry at the best of times, but more significant is the fact that Yamagata and Sanfrecce Hiroshima do indeed look, at the very least, better placed to mount a challenge for survival than the relegated Tokyo Verdy and Consadole Sapporo sides they have replaced. If Alex Miller’s JEF United Chiba can indeed pick up points at anything like the rate they managed after the Scot’s arrival midway through last season, this should mean that any weaknesses shown by Jubilo will go more heavily punished this year.

 

With the short, accessible format of both the text and audio versions, the new Minutecast service will aim both to help keep football fans from overseas in touch with the latest goings on in Japan, and to provide material of interest to Japanese fans keen to practise their English. Links and further information will, of course, be provided both on this page and elsewhere as soon as the system is up and running smoothly. We look forward to inviting you to subscribe and get all the latest need-to-know news in your inbox or on your MP3 player in time for the end of work – or the journey in if you are in Europe – every Monday and Friday.