20 Jun 2011(Mon)

Seven-times J. League champions Kashima Antlers and AFC Champions League quarter-finalists Cerezo Osaka both edged away from the bottom three with 2-0 victories this past weekend – in the former’s case, a first win at the Kashima Stadium since it was restored to working order after the 11 March earthquake. While the table remains less than pleasant reading for their fans, they can at least point to a springtime toiling away in Asia, plus the games in hand still to be completed as a result.

 

At Urawa Reds, there are no such excuses. A run of six games unbeaten since mid-May had been rather misleading given that the only victory recorded during this time was a 2-0 ‘scalp’ of Montedio Yamagata in the Yamazaki Nabisco Cup; Urawa’s league position only actually improved by one, from 17th to 16th on goal difference, over this period. Following Saturday’s 3-1 home loss to Shimizu S-Pulse, a far more accurate indicator of their current plight is the stat that reads no wins in nine league matches since the – in hindsight – peculiar 3-0 thrashing of champions Nagoya Grampus back in April.

 

Manager Zeljko Petrovic, who arrived from West Ham United at the back end of last year, is an intelligent man and spoke eloquently to John Duerden of ESPN Soccernet last week about his long-term targets for the Reds. He even offered a welcome dose of reality for a side that has been left behind with its head in the clouds since winning the continental crown back in 2007, saying “This club is a big club like Manchester United but it had a team like Bolton Wanderers”.

 

Yet perhaps his former employers would be a better analogy. The struggles of the Champions League representatives and a series of other, altogether more surprising result patterns have given the early J1 table a decidedly unfamiliar feel; with a line-up that includes the likes of Mitsuru Nagata, Yosuke Kashiwagi, Marcio Richardes, and Genki Haraguchi, it is almost criminal that Urawa have not taken advantage. As much as Petrovic believes his squad are talented and simply not getting the results they deserve, his biggest short-term task is to ensure the players really are under no illusions. As West Ham – and, indeed, the FC Tokyo side full of Japan internationals that just never got around to playing even vaguely well last term – will surely testify, no team is ever too good to go down.

 

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While the weeks continue to the pass with the reigning second division champions clear at the top of the J1 table, scoring more (until Kawasaki Frontale hit five past Omiya Ardija last Wednesday) and conceding fewer than anyone else along the way, plenty of observers have speculated on when the Kashiwa Reysol bubble will finally burst. A 3-0 home thrashing at the hands of Ryoichi Maeda-inspired Jubilo Iwata in midweek looked like it might have given the cynics their answer, but Saturday’s trip to hapless Avispa Fukuoka (played 11, points 1, goal difference -19) afforded the best possible opportunity for an immediate and comfortable recovery.

 

The real challenge lies in how the squad will cope with an intensive run of difficult fixtures that has replaced the previously scheduled break for the Copa America. Between now and the end of July, Reysol will face Gamba Osaka, Ventforet Kofu, Cerezo Osaka, Vegalta Sendai (three times – home and away in the league, plus the away leg of their Nabisco Cup tie), Sanfrecce Hiroshima, Kawasaki Frontale, and Kashima. But, for now, they most certainly deserve the benefit of the doubt. Nelsinho Baptista has again proved his tactical acumen and moulded a collection of J. League journeymen and inspired acquisitions into something far greater and more attractive than the sum of their parts. Besides, even the very best can be allowed a blip – Grampus actually lost by three or more goals on three separate occasions last year, but the manner in which they bounced back to hoover up points every time was the hallmark of champions.

 

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Two games in hand carried over from the ultimately-best-forgotten Champions League campaign mean that Gamba, who visit Kashiwa on Wednesday, actually have the second highest number of points still available to them. Predicting how the remainder of the season might pan out in north Osaka, however, is rather a mug’s game, following the all-too-predictable reappearance of a pattern that has dogged on-the-pitch preparations at Banpaku for a number of years – sudden mid-season departures.

 

As previously discussed on these pages, the impending loss of wonder kid Takashi Usami to German giants Bayern Munich was unavoidable and, from a broader perspective anyway, by no means undesirable. Ignoring the longer-term issues of value for money for the Japanese selling party, the only immediate problem here is timing; something inexorably linked to the overlapping of the European and Asian footballing calendars and which must thus surely lead – whether Albirex Niigata like it or not – to discussions of a restructuring sooner or later. But the transfer of leading scorer Adriano to Qatar Stars League champions Lekhwija less than six months after joining from neighbours Cerezo is another matter entirely. For Gamba to lose one Brazilian striker midway through the campaign to Middle Eastern oil money was unfortunate; two was annoying. Three, however, was a tad suspicious. Four in as many years is downright scandalous.

 

I must quickly clarify that we should not blame the player himself, tiresome as his badge-kissing antics may have been with the move already public knowledge. Adriano is 29 years old, little-known in his home nation, and has spent the past 18 months living in a country with whose culture and language he is unfamiliar for purely professional reasons. Given that his playing career almost certainly has less than a decade to run, there is little logical argument that he should refuse the opportunity to move to another foreign country and quadruple his family’s income overnight. This situation differs from Magno Alves in 2007, who went AWOL to Saudi Arabia with just two league games remaining and Gamba still in with a shout of overhauling freefalling leaders Urawa; and from Bare the following year, who opted for the dirham of Dubai club Al-Ahli despite bids having been received from at least two far higher-profile clubs in France’s Ligue 1.

 

But the similarities are troubling. All four of the fleeing forwards – the aforementioned trio, plus Leandro in 2009 – fit into the common Gamba template of purchasing Brazilians that have already proved their credentials elsewhere in Japan. Given how shockingly awful the club’s attempts have been to scout players directly from South America – like non-playing left-back Mineiro in 2008 and overweight striker Ze Carlos last year – this policy would be entirely logical if it weren’t for two obviously inherent flaws: one, that said Brazilians with credentials will likely be on other clubs’ radars too, and two, that they will already be that much closer to the maximum duration that they ever envisaged living in this foreign country anyway (a point routinely forgotten when discussing football transfers). It is impossible that the club is not aware of this after four years, and as such their motives should be called into question.

 

Are these strikers being signed with the sell-on value as a major priority? Is this policy a profit-orientated alternative to investment in a proper scouting system? Where, exactly, is all the money going? And what about the long-term players, coaching staff, and fans, whose emotional investment is unquestioned but who have been routinely forced to endure mid-season disruption throughout an era that could have been dynastic?