Yanagisawa is back, and with him attacking soccer, runs, shots, chances and goals are back too. The second half today was really awesome, with Sanga players finally, attacking the ball, hassling, overlapping, creating chance after chance until the deserved tie.
Yuto was rested because of his broken nose, Lee Jong-soo is still away with South Korea and Kakuda and Hayashi got a day off. Kato Koken too had to come out after some decent 30 minutes (light injury?) and so it was a chance to see Teshima (some lightyears below Lee Jong-soo, by the way) and the two young Nakamuras, Taisuke and Atsuta, who both did rather well.
But, as said above, real joy today came from seeing Paulinho and Yanagisawa zooming across the attacking front, Diego playing as a real offensive midfielder (another assist for him), and the whole team storming up every time we stole a ball in the middle--and it happened a lot thanks to the very inspired Watanabe and Ando.
I should mention that Yanagisawa actually scored some FIVE minutes after coming in, while at the other end "Chicken-head" Mizutani made a couple of brilliant saves to deny FC Tokyo to kill the game on their rare counterattacks. In the end we had 23 shots!!
We had started badly, giving away a dumb goal on a cross that should have been cleared way before it got to Ishikawa, but gradually we took over the midfield, and from the 3oth minute we clearly dominated the game, leaving to the Tokyoites only the crumbs. It was a bit the reverse of the J1 game in Tokyo, where they had the ball most of the time, and I was sad only that celebrations at the end were mild, because the unwritten rules of Japanese Soccer say you go banzai only when you win...
Be that as it may, a very impressive game, and we finally got the idea of the value of this team when most of its effective are in place. All on a warm (or hot?) spring day, with 7,500 on the stands. Dominik came in late but he still bought me a beer as usual, so overall a wonderful day at Nishikyogoku.
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