Manchester United vs Barcelona may have Asian football fans tuning in to the UEFA Champions League final at all hours of the night, but there's no guarantee that the AFC's decision to hold the Asian Champions League final as a one-off event in Tokyo will prove a success.

AFC officials must have winced when Gamba Osaka were drawn to host Kawasaki Frontale in a one-off Round of 16 clash in June, with one of the tournament favourites set to depart at an early stage. Gamba are the defending Asian champions, but surely AFC officials are desperate for the free-scoring Frontale to reach the final - for no other reason than that their fans need only cross the Tama River to reach Tokyo's National Stadium.

The crumbling 'Kokuritsu' has been nominated as the venue for Asia's first one-off final since the Champions League was overhauled in 2003 - perhaps as a nod towards Tokyo's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.  

But unless a Japanese team reaches the final, the clash could be played out against the backdrop of row upon row of empty seats in Tokyo, regardless of whether the final pits a team from West Asia against an eastern counterpart.

It appears a disaster in waiting for the AFC, who may counter by simply giving away thousands of free tickets to entice Japanese fans to fill the cavernous venue. It's a far cry from the media circus surrounding the UEFA Champions League final, and with millions of fans throughout Asia set to tune into the European equivalent, the AFC can only count on a fraction of that support when the Asian Champions League rolls around in December.

It's been mentioned elsewhere, but the worst kept secret from the "Kop-end" at Nihondaira Stadium is true - I'm going home. So hectic have attempts to organise the move back to Australia been that I almost forgot about Shimizu S-Pulse's home clash with Montedio Yamagata in the League Cup group stage on Wednesday night. That probably says something about the tournament itself.

In the end I shuffled down to Nihondaira at the last minute as part of a respectable crowd of 8,245 - and the fans on display were treated to a tolerable affair, albeit one that the tiny band of travelling Yamagata supporters were more inclined to celebrate in the end.

Having brought their physical brand of football down from the north, the mountain men left Shimizu with a well-deserved 1-0 win that puts them top of the table with two-wins-from-two in Group B.

A well-taken strike from midfielder Katsuyuki Miyazawa - who then spent the rest of the game throwing elbows in the direction of any Shimizu player with the temerity to go near him - coupled with an excellent performance from stand-in keeper Yuki Uekusa, was enough to get the visiting team over the line.

But the League Cup group stage has problems - not the least this new two-group format that the J. League has been forced to adopt because of changes to this year's Asian Champions League.

While the diehards generally tend to turn out for any competitive fixture - and the fact that League Cup group stage games are practically thrown in for free with season-ticket packages surely helps - more and more casual fans are realising that the League Cup group stage holds very little allure.

Shimizu S-Pulse and Montedio Yamagata could hardly be accused of not wanting to win this match. Both sent out strong squads, and Yamagata celebrated their goal like it had just won them a league title. But with J1 teams already facing each other on such a regular basis, surely the time to revamp a tired-looking League Cup is now.

Round 6 of the J. League kicks off this weekend with an unusual Friday night clash between Gamba Osaka and Montedio Yamagata.

With the Osakans off to the far-flung reaches of Sumatra to take on Indonesian outfit Sriwijaya in the AFC Champions League next Tuesday, the J. League has allowed Gamba to push forward their home clash with surprise package Montedio to give them time to prepare for their Asian gambit.

Australians will be familiar with the idea of Friday night football - indeed Friday night games are key marketing concepts for both the National Rugby League and Australian Football League. However it's a novel concept in Japan, and with fans struggling to leave their office in time for kick-off, Gamba have slashed ticket prices for club members in an attempt to draw a crowd.

The TV ratings would make for interesting analysis too, and with many Japanese working regular business hours on a Saturday, this could prove an interesting round of fixtures for the J. League. Midweek league games are common enough - particularly in J2 - but it remains to be seen what the response for a Friday night encounter is compared to the more common Wednesday-night variety.

However things pan out, I'll be tuning in on TV for a bit of Friday night action, and what's more I'll be making the trip down to Ecopa Stadium on Sunday afternoon for the latest installment of the Shizuoka derby.

These two sides have already met this season, but with league points on the line, the atmosphere will be ramped up a notch for what is always a feisty affair.

Former Urawa Reds striker Yuichiro Nagai is expected to make his belated debut off the bench for the good guys of Shizuoka football, while Jubilo Iwata are not only struggling at the foot of the table - they're also missing top scorer and serial yellow-card-collector Gilsinho through suspension for this one.

Good news for S-Pulse, but these things often have a way of evening themselves out, and after Jubilo Iwata outplayed Urawa Reds at Ecopa Stadium in a 1-1 draw this season, the team from the blue half of Shizuoka will no doubt keep things interesting in what is shaping up as an intriguing contest.

Are Shimizu S-Pulse the best team in the J. League? Is Marcos Paulo Alves the best player in Japan?  

The answer to both questions is, of course, "no." But it's hard not to arrive at that theory after S-Pulse saw off Kawasaki Frontale 1-0 in front of 17,256 fans at Outsourcing Stadium Nihondaira - particularly after Kawasaki dished out a humiliating 5-0 thrashing of Central Coast Mariners in the Asian Champions League in midweek. 

Maybe it was their midweek trip to Australia that took the wind out of Kawasaki sails, but they struggled against an S-Pulse side that defended conscientiously in this game, even if the Shizuoka outfit didn't always look the better of the two teams.

Marcos Paulo came off the bench for a seven-minute cameo in this game, and once again the former Brazil international was a calming influence on his team. Along with Jungo Fujimoto - himself a half-time substitute - both men came off the bench to prove a decisive influence on this game, if only to break up the increasingly desperate Frontale attacks that continued to surge towards Yohei Nishibe's goal.

Fortunately for Nishibe, his team had gone one goal up thanks to a fantastic header from Shinji Okazaki after just sixteen minutes. Anyone who claims that Japanese players struggle to score goals has clearly never seen a J. League game, after Japan international Okazaki powered a stupendous header past international team-mate Eiji Kawashima to hand the home team the lead. 

Up until that point the hosts had struggled to contain Frontale's free-floating virtuoso Vitor Junior, but despite several nice touches on the ball, the former Santos man failed to feed a killer ball to an isolated Chong Tese up front for the visitors.

Shimizu S-Pulse could even have gone two ahead but for a terrible miss from Jumpei Takaki, with the full-back failing to repeat his finish in the League Cup a fortnight ago when he smashed an effort straight at Eiji Kawashima - who did well to stand tall and parry Takaki's thunderous point-blank strike.

Takaki will be relieved that his counterpart Yusuke Mori produced a similar save from Yohei Nishibe in the second half, but other than that Frontale struggled to break down a well-marshalled S-Pulse defence.

About the only disappointing aspect for S-Pulse coach Kenta Hasegawa was the fact that giant Norwegian striker Frode Johnsen failed to open his account for his new team.

Nevertheless this was a morale-boosting win for the Shizuoka side, and they will go into their upcoming Shizuoka derby with local rivals Jubilo Iwata next week bristling with a new-found confidence.

Liverpool hammer Real Madrid. Barcelona thrash Lyon. Sporting Lisbon capitulate at Bayern Munich, while Chelsea sneak through against Juventus. Arsenal's win on penalties over Roma makes for grim viewing in Italy, as the English Premier League begins to assert its dominance over the struggling Italian game.

None of these things would probably matter in Asia, if it weren't for the fact that the Asian Football Confederation is trying to emulate the success of the UEFA Champions League with a revamped AFC Champions League of its own.

Yet in an opening round in which a crowd of 500 turned out to watch Qatar's Al Gharafa lose 3-1 to Saudi side Al Shabab - and this in a Qatar that one day hopes to host a World Cup - about the closest Asian fans came to the glamour of the European version was when the TV cameras zoomed in on former Tokyo Verdy striker Hulk as he went around for Portugese outfit Porto in their UEFA Champions League tie with Atletico Madrid.

Therein lies the problem. With so many fans in Asia absorbed in the drama that is the UEFA Champions League, it's little wonder that attendances such as the 3,156 that turned out at the 44,466-capacity Big Crown Stadium to witness South Korean outfit Ulsan Hyundai Horang-i lose 3-1 to Toyota-backed Nagoya Grampus, are the norm.

And that's only to scratch at the surface of the problem. Despite a vast increase in prize-money, it still piffles into insignificance compared to the riches on offer in Japan. So it is any wonder to see reigning J. League champions Kashima Antlers sleep-walk through a 4-1 hammering at the hands of recently-crowned K-League champions Suwon Samsung Bluewings? 

A decent crowd of 14,126 turned out for the Suwon - Kashima clash - not a bad effort on a cold, midweek evening, especially since many Asian fans turn in long hours at the office. But a crowd of 23,168 fans turned out just four days earlier to watch Suwon lose to Pohang Steelers on the opening day of the K. League season. And that brings up another vexing issue.

It's a delicate one - and one that probably requires an element of the dreaded political correctness in terms of discussion - but many Asian cultures retain centuries-old superiority complexes when it comes to dealing with their neighbours. Far from viewing their teams as "underdogs" and wanting to see them do battle with regional heavyweight rivals, some Asian fans would rather pretend that their regional rivals simply didn't exist.

Gamba Osaka's 3-0 win over Chinese side Shandong Luneng might have prompted a solemn cry of "we suspected as much!" from some of the 10,312 fans on hand at Banpaku in midweek - and that in itself was a larger crowd than defending champions Gamba usually draw in Asia - but there will be many more fans in attendance when the Osakans host Jubilo Iwata in the J. League on Saturday afternoon. Best to slay a familiar foe than potentially lose face against a regional rival, it seems - and if necessary, test yourself against the best of the world at the FIFA Club World Cup.

Nevertheless, the AFC look set to persist with their "if you build it, they will come" approach. I, for one, am happy to see them do so. Speaking as an Australian, there is much for A-League sides to learn from our Asian counterparts, and the Champions League has the potential to chip away at some of the barriers that still stand tall in Asian culture - even if it is only for ninety minutes.

But clearly, popularising the AFC Champions League is going to take some time. And given the toll it takes on clubs - Kawasaki Frontale, for example, play games on March 7, 11, 14, 18 and 22 in both the J. League and Champions League in what is the opening month of their season - it's not difficult to understand why some sides might prefer to concentrate on domestic duties.

Urawa Reds must be laughing at all of this. Reaching the Champions League might be their goal, but it's the fact that they are not playing in it this season that will probably help them reach it.