And then there were four

The 2007 Emperor's Cup has been whittled down to just four, following the completion of the quarter-finals last weekend.

The last eight kicked-off with Gamba Osaka beating Shimizu S-Pulse 1-0 in extra-time at Nagai Stadium in Osaka, thanks to substitute Shinichi Terada's 92nd minute strike. The win ends Shimizu's hopes of playing a semi-final on home territory (of sorts), with the semi-final on their side of the draw scheduled to take place at Ecopa Stadium in Fukuroi - some seventy kilometres from the town of Shimizu.

Saturday's second quarter-final saw Japan Football League side Honda FC take on Kashima Antlers at Yurtec Stadium in Sendai. Non-leaguers Honda took newly crowned J-League champions Kashima to extra-time, before finally succumbing to veteran Atsushi Yanagisawa - who is reportedly on the move to newly promoted Kyoto Sanga FC, and who scored a 110th minute winner to keep Kashima's hopes of a League and Cup double alive.

In keeping with the Japan Football Association's infuriating policy of scheduling Emperor's Cup fixtures in baffling venues, the third quarter-final was long set down to take place at Saitama Stadium. Clearly the JFA and its Urawa-loving President Saburo Kawabuchi were banking on the Reds reaching the quarter-final stage. No one told Ehime FC, however, and the J2 side unceremoniously dumped defending champions Urawa out of the competition back in Round 4.

After beating Yokohama FC in the last round, Ehime FC's run finally came to an end at the hands of Kawasaki Frontale, who won 2-0 but who could probably have wracked up a cricket score if they had actually been trying. These two sides last met in J2 back in 2004, but these days Ehime and Kawasaki are world's apart, with Kengo Nakamura, Juninho and co. having transformed Kawasaki into one of the hottest teams in Japanese football.

The final quarter-final saw two of Japan's most dismal performers go head-to-head in a clash that was surely marketed as "The Match-Up Of The Mediocre!" FC Tokyo will proudly go home in the knowledge that they are perhaps the only team this season to make Sanfrecce Hiroshima look good, as Hiroshima came away from Kumamoto Stadium with a 2-0 win thanks to goals form Yosuke Kashiwagi and Yuichi Komano, both of whom are rumoured to be heading for the exit door at newly relegated Hiroshima.

Gamba Osaka will thus meet Sanfrecce Hiroshima at Ecopa Stadium, while Kawasaki take on Kashima in what appears to be a far more appealing contest at the National Stadium in Tokyo, with both ties taking place on December 29. Three days later the National Stadium will be rocking for the Final, as the long Japanese season draws to a close with the traditional New Year's day Emperor's Cup final.