Jaws drop, but Jubilo don't

Well, that was a close run thing.

The Shizuoka derby lives to see another day after local misfits Jubilo Iwata got their act together just in the nick of time, beating Vegalta Sendai 3-2 on aggregate in the promotion/relegation playoff to retain their place in the top flight for next season.

The star of the playoff was undoubtedly Jubilo's teenage midfielder Takuya Matsuura.

Matsuura turns twenty on December 21, but his performances belied his young age as he scored the equaliser in the first leg in front of a hostile capacity crowd of 18,974 at Yurtec Sendai Stadium, cancelling out Brazilian striker Nadson's first half goal for the northerners.

The stage was set for an epic second-leg showdown at the compact Yamaha Stadium and 16,693 fans piled into every available vantage point to witness another J. League classic. 

Vegalta are no strangers to top flight football - they spent two seasons in J1 in the early part of the century - and predictably one of Japan's most passionately supported clubs fought tooth and nail to get back to the promised land.

They didn't count on coming up against Takuya Matsuura though, as the youngster chested home a Ryoichi Maeda cross just before half-time to calm Jubilo nerves.  

With Vegalta piling everyone forward in search of an equaliser in the second half, Jubilo took their chance on the break - and what a goal it was, as a long clearance from a corner was picked up by Matsuura on the halfway line, and the youngster twisted and turned inside two Sendai defenders before chipping the ball over keeper Takuto Hayashi, to send the home fans packed into the clock end at Yamaha into frenzied jubilation.

As is so often the case in football, Sendai managed to pull back a stoppage-time consolation that only added to their fans' misery, as ex-North Korean international Ryang Yong-Gi curled a spectacular free-kick over the wall and passed Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi in the final minute of the game, although the Zainichi Korean's strike proved too little to propel Sendai back into the top flight.

So the Shizuoka derby lives to see another day - not that too many Shimizu S-Pulse fans were concerned about the prospect of it disappearing - and Jubilo coach Hans Ooft was a visibly relieved man after the final whistle sounded in Iwata.

Grinning like a cheshire cat, the big Dutchman thanked the Jubilo fans and promised that his club had learned from their mistakes this season.

One would hope so, with the three-times J. League champions coming within a whisker of experiencing a taste of life in the basement of professional Japanese football in 2009.