10 Feb 2012(Fri)

What’s it like covering football matches in the press box? What does being a semi-freelance writer actually entail? How do you combine it all with the day job? These are just some of the questions that beloved family members, friends old and new, and even exciting strangers on Twitter ask me with truly surprising infrequency.

Nevertheless, like in many professions the busiest part of the year is immediately followed by the quietest, and with the J. League clubs only just beginning to ease themselves into pre-season preparations, now seems like an opportune time to shed light on the above and, ooh, a modicum more with a semi-freelance writer’s diary of December 2011 – a footballing month dominated (in Japan, anyway) by the FIFA Club World Cup, hot off the back of the climax to the J. League season.

Any suggestion that this also conveniently serves as a means of easing myself into pre-season preparations following an extended Christmas break in the UK from which the mince pies and cider still require a bit of working off would be purely coincidental.


Sunday 11 December 2011: Osaka – Nagoya – Toyota

11:30 Hooray! I actually get to be a journalist today. The lop-sided – and quite reasonably so, in my opinion; albeit not in everyone’s – nature of the FIFA Club World Cup means that while the champions of Europe and South America will automatically await in the last four, the remaining quartet from the rest of the planet must first duke it out in a double-header of ‘quarter-finals’ to be played at the spectacular Toyota Stadium in, well, Toyota. Opened in 2001, this 45,000-seater facility was constructed despite already having been removed from the shortened list of Japanese venues for the co-hosted World Cup twelve months later, and is too remote from the far larger city of Nagoya to serve as anything more than an occasional home for 2010 J. League champions Grampus. However, the local automotive giant likely doesn’t mind too much when both stadium and municipality names complete a triple whammy of publicity during a competition of which it is the long-term presenting sponsor.

Though it will entail getting up far earlier on a Sunday morning than I usually prefer (i.e. at all), I arrange to meet Cesare Polenghi, the Asia Managing Editor for Goal.com, by ‘the clock’ in Nagoya Station shortly before noon. After a short journey up on the Shinkansen, it soon transpires that there are two prominent timepieces at opposite ends of station, but my Italian friend’s recently-bleached hair at least makes him an easy spot. He is jet-lagged from a quick trip to Milan to interview Yuto Nagatomo for Internazionale’s official Japanese television programme, making my 8am alarm call seem something of a trivial complaint, but says that his disturbed sleeping patterns at least enabled him to catch the nerazzurri’s 2-0 win over Fiorentina – a game for which he will be commenting when the Inter Channel record an ‘as-live’ broadcast tomorrow. This way he gets to sound extra insightful and even prophetic.

Cesare kindly escorts me to the Castle Hotel down the road where FIFA have curiously hired a guest room from which to issue their media passes (apparently our actual accommodation this evening will be rather more ‘budget’). Having collected his pass ahead of the playoff match on Thursday, he passes the time while I fill in the necessary forms by flirting overtly with the all-female team of Japanese press liaisons in three different languages. Suddenly he doesn’t seem so sleepy anymore. We catch up with Jun Nagata, a Goal.com freelancer I know from events hosted by SIX (the company that operates Football Japan) for a collective of Japanese football writers and administrators called Salon 2002, and board a half-full media bus to Toyota. The three of us talk business, plus a bit of late-1990s rivalry between Manchester United and Juventus, before Cesare remembers he’s tired again and opts to rest his eyes.


Cesare (right) and I pretend to be doing something important


13:30 Greeting us at the stadium is Alex Stone, a FIFA Senior Media Relations Manager whom I had first met at the 2010 tournament in Abu Dhabi and who happens to hail from Yeovil – a pleasant source for bonding as encounters with fellow sons of Somerset in the spheres of international football are an unfathomably rare privilege. The previous year, our Emirati hosts had gone all out with the hospitality and left the administrative stuff in the capable hands of Alex and his colleagues, but on this occasion, the Japanese organisers had apparently rejected FIFA’s central systems and insisted upon doing things their way. In practice, this meant that instead of applying online for seats in the media tribune plus passes to press conferences and mixed zones – and being informed in advance whether said applications had been successful – journalists were supposed to turn up at the stadium on the day to see what we had been allocated. Part of the reason that my little group had turned up some three and a half hours before kickoff was concern over the possibility of not receiving anything.
“I have absolutely no idea how they think they know what everyone wants or needs,” smiled an evidently bemused Alex as we renewed acquaintances and shared similar tales of the need to pick your battles with Japanese authorities. “I can only assume it must be telepathy. In any case, I’ve got a hundred or so extra passes to hand out at my discretion, so...”

We collect our respective envelopes and proceed to the press room – stopping on the way so that Cesare can introduce, nay, sell me to Futoshi Nagamatsu, the JFA’s Media Operation Manager (apparently my embarrassment at essentially having my CV name-dropped to someone I’ve never before met is just British reserve that I really need to get over). Upon arrival, we sit down and discuss who’s doing what. I agree to share the post-match quotes I manage to gather with Goal in exchange for accommodation expenses; as well the little brown pass that actually entitles me to enter the mixed zone. The latter is swapped with Cesare for the silver press conference card that I had been allocated but never required in the first place. My telepathic transmitters can’t quite have been tuned to the right frequency.

The international nature of the tournament makes for an infinitely more cosmopolitan press room than before your average Japan match. I get chatting with a friendly journalist from Qatar called Asif, who shows me his newspaper and the feature he’d compiled on the World Cup that his own country* will controversially host in 2022. He laughs at the notion that the event could be brought forward to January; assuring me that everyone will have a great time and any concern voiced about the weather is just narrow-minded moaning on the part of a few Europeans. As for Al-Sadd, the surprise winners of the Asian Champions League who will kick off today’s proceedings against Esperance of Tunisia at 4pm, Asif insists that they have better quality players than they’re often given credit for but admits their defensive nature doesn’t always make them much fun to watch. He reckons it’s 50-50 as to who goes through to face Barcelona in Yokohama on Thursday.

(* “Well,” says Asif, “I’m actually Egyptian. But then most people who live in Qatar aren’t actually from there either, so what does it matter?”)

With still a couple of hours to kill, I leaf through the official tournament programme – with whose contents I am already largely familiar as I was the one hired to do about half of the translation from Japanese to English. Experience of the industry in this country, however, makes me wary of translations butchered by non-native speakers without consultation for layout purposes, and frustratingly it doesn’t take long to find examples of this practice in action here either. Still, I suppose that makes the lack of a personal credit on the contents page a blessing in disguise. I take a stroll outside the stadium to have a look at the fans, food, and merchandise. Despite the naturally larger numbers of people there to support the ‘home’ side, Kashiwa Reysol, the overwhelming presence in terms of both noise and colour is from the Esperance contingent. “Trois à zero” is the confident reply when I ask a group of travelling supporters for their predictions.


16:00 Sadly for them, Al-Sadd are as ruthless going forward as they are stubborn defensively, stealing the cheekiest of 2-0 leads with goals on the counter either side of the interval through Khalfan Ibrahim and captain Abdulla Koni, despite seemingly being dominated by the Tunisians virtually from start to finish. The silenced red and yellow fans are spurred back into action by an Oussama Darragi strike to make the deficit 2-1, but their heroes have two ‘equalisers’ disallowed and the final whistle triggers an angry response from the stands. At least one Esperance follower makes it onto the pitch beyond the Japanese security guards, who admittedly rarely get much practice at anything through their J. League duties. Down in the mixed zone, Alex hopes that the brief cameo of a mindless few is not the maker of tomorrow’s headlines.

(To be continued. Click here for Part 2.)