What a time to be alive! These are certainly heady days for fans of Shimizu S-Pulse, who are gearing up for three massive clashes in just seven days.

The first takes them to a sold-out National Stadium in Tokyo, where one of Japan's most popular clubs will be looking to see off Oita Trinita in the League Cup final. "Kokuritsu" will be a sea of orange with more than 30,000 S-Pulse fans expected to turn out in the capital, but with Shimizu red-hot favourites to claim the title, coach Kenta Hasegawa will do well to dampen some of the euphoria currently surrounding his team.

Any suggestions that this will be a mere walk in the park should be dispelled by memories of Shimizu's opening day home defeat to Oita Trinita in the J. League this season. That spelled a catastrophic start to the new campaign for S-Pulse, but for Oita it set off a fairytale run that is yet to cease, with the Kyushu side not only qualifying for the League Cup final - they are also sitting fourth in the table, just two points behind league leaders Kashima Antlers with four games to go.

Oita's chances of winning a first ever trophy have been cruelled by a suspension to influential midfielder Shingo Suzuki for this match. Worse still for coach Pericles is that goalkeeper Shusaku Nishikawa has not recovered from injury in time to take his place between the posts, while fellow Beijing Olympian Masato Morishige is also suffering from injury, meaning that Oita could start the League Cup final missing arguably their three most important players. Much will rest on the young shoulders of midfielder Mu Kanazaki who has been the driving force of the Oita attack for most of the campaign.

Travelling up to Sendagaya could prove problematic for S-Pulse fans given that seemingly half of Shizuoka is planning to decamp to the National Stadium, but spare a thought for Oita supporters - who have probably left for the game by now - with barely enough seats on JAL and ANA airlines between the two to accommodate those wishing to fly up to the main island of Honshu for Oita's big day out. 

As if one Cup outing wasn't exciting enough, S-Pulse are back in action on Wednesday evening, this time in the Emperor's Cup. There'll be no repeat of Shimizu's nail-biting penalty shoot-out win over the students of Meiji University in the fourth round last season - no sir, this time it's the big guns coming to town, as Alex Miller brings top flight outfit JEF United down from Chiba to the atmospheric Nihondaira Stadium. Both clubs must have sighed a collective groan of disbelief to have been drawn against each other - particularly as the two also meet at Nihondaira in the penultimate round of the league campaign - but only one will progress to the fifth round of the Cup and a chance to claim a coveted place in the newly cashed-up AFC Champions League next season.  

If S-Pulse fans weren't already frothing at the mouth at the prospect of these two clashes, they'll be suffering from severe heart palpitations come next Saturday when Shimizu make the seventy kilometre trip down to Ecopa Stadium to take on bitter local rivals Jubilo Iwata in the fabled Shizuoka derby. S-Pulse fans are still revelling in the glory of last season's double over Jubilo, but the hero from those fixtures is long gone, with Cho Jae-Jin these days not endearing himself to K-League fans by missing open goals for his new club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors.

The big South Korean will always be a legend around these parts, but S-Pulse fans can't afford to dwell in the past, and they've already played Jubilo three times this season as the two clubs drew 1-1 in front of a full house at Nihondaira Stadium in the league. They met again in the League Cup group stage, with S-Pulse crushing Jubilo 4-2 at Nihondaira, only to be on the end of a 2-0 defeat at Yamaha Stadium in the final group game.

Kenta Hasegawa will hope that his team is not punch-drunk given the critical fixture list come November 8, but with Jubilo Iwata sitting second-from-bottom in the league and Dutch coach Hans Ooft desperate to drag the Shizuoka giants to safety, this will be a bitterly contested clash with more than 40,000 fans expected to pile in to the windswept Ecopa Stadium to witness it.

All to play for, then, for Shimizu S-Pulse and fans of the popular seaside club will hope that it doesn't end in tears in seven days time.

On a quick personal note, I hope you guys are digging the new banner and profile pic I've come up with as a means of increasing readership from more than just that Mongolian yak herder and the Obscure Leagues Of The World fanclub in the Faroe Islands. I had a thousand monkeys working for a thousand years on a thousand typewriters to come up with that one (but seriously, cheers to Soul Rebel for the professional-looking banner and my old mate Rieper for the life-like portrait). Hold on to your hats, guys, I can feel a Pulitzer prize coming on here. 

Hey ho, fellow J. League lovers!

I recently sat down with Shimizu S-Pulse fan Yuichi Korenaga to discuss his opinion on Shimizu's season and chat about his attitudes towards football in general.

He had some interesting things to say about the J. League and overseas football, so check out the interview here.

Cheers!

I read an interesting piece by Jesse Fink over at The Roar the other day about the A-League's current struggle to attract fans through the turnstiles. While I found myself nodding in agreement as usual with the Finkster, his suggestion that the A-League might scour the J. League for some talent got me thinking about just who from these shores would prove useful Down Under.

My first thought was Nagoya's out-of-contract, not-necessarily-wanting-to-return-to-Norway, goal-every-other-game former international Frode Johnsen. The big blonde bomber has not only been one of the most consistent goalscorers in Japanese football since his switch from ex-UEFA Champions League mainstays Rosenborg, he's also one of the nicest blokes going around. His salary might prove a stumbling block - something tells me that Toyota-backed Nagoya have a fair bit of bling to throw around - but he strikes me as the kind of bloke for whom a nice sea change by the beach with the wife and kids would not affect his strong work ethic and ability to find the net with monotonous regularity.

Then I turned my thoughts to Consadole Sapporo's hapless Brazilian Davi. The agile striker has been a joy to watch (for non-Sapporo fans, at least) as he struggles to rein in his combustible temperament in the midst of the total incompetence of his team-mates. The former Vitoria striker was one of the best in J2 last season, but the fact that he is now the top-flight's second-top scorer despite only playing twenty games speaks volumes for his quality - and the majority of his goals have been sights to behold, as well.

Davi is clearly the type of player that attracts fans through the gates - I know I was looking forward to seeing him when he came to Nihondaira Stadium last month - but then I remembered the rumours coming out of the Japanese press that several teams in the Gulf States are looking at luring some of the J. League's foreign stars to the Middle-East.

Australians already know about one of them. Emerson has been at the centre of a legal wrangle over his eligibility to play for Qatar in World Cup qualifiers for months, but before his reincarnation as a Qatari-goal getter, the Brazilian-born striker was a regular goalscorer for Urawa Reds. Emerson arguably set the trend for J. League players cashing in their yen and heading to the Middle-East, but Magno Alves upped the stakes when he walked out on Gamba Osaka to join Saudi side Al-Ittihad just days after the Osakans had lifted the League Cup in 2007.

The next Gamba striker to lob up at the Emirates Airlines express check-in desk was Baré, who booked himself a one-way flight to Dubai to link up with Al-Ahli. Gamba Osaka banked a cool six million euros for their end of the deal, but the simple fact is that the J. League is slowly but surely losing some of its best.

The departure of some of the J. League's Brazilian stars may ultimately help Japanese football. As it currently stands the Japanese national team has chronic problems in attack, with coach Takeshi Okada admitting that Japanese strikers in the J. League struggle in comparison to their Brazilian counterparts - many of whom spend half the time hogging the ball, and the other half berating their team-mates for not passing to them.

It's a hard stretch to see any Japanese players willing to sacrifice a generous salary, comfortable lifestyle and familiar culture to test their skills in the A-League, and suggestions that the J. League will "raid the A-League" for players next season seem wide of the mark given the extensive scouting network that most Japanese clubs employ in Brazil - not to mention the historical success of Koreans in the J. League.

A more realistic appraisal might be that the J. League becomes a kind of second-tier league - at least in terms of cash-flow - as it struggles to keep up with the oil-rich Emirates. Already the J. League is considered by many to be the most professional of Asian leagues, but a substantial injection of cash could gradually change things in the Gulf.

The J. League will always continue to attract skillful foreigners, but whether they are of the same calibre as players like Emerson and Baré remains to be seen. The departure of some of the limelight-grabbing Brazilians from Japanese football may ultimately be a good thing - at least for the Japanese national team - but with the A-League now a new player on the block and competing with Japan and the K-League for supplies of talent, the J. League will do well to keep an eye on the ball, lest the focus of Asian club football makes a seismic shift west.

How many match reports have you seen start with the phrase "so near, yet so far?" Too many to count. Yet if there was one cliché that could sum up Shimizu S-Pulse's evening in the first leg of their League Cup semi-final clash with Gamba Osaka, that would be it.

And if there was one moment that could sum up Shimizu's miserable season so far, it would surely be the final play of the game. With the scores locked at 1-1, having battered Gamba into brutal submission throughout the ninety minutes, and being roared on by a mixture of passion and sheer desperation from the terraces, S-Pulse swung in a corner. A host of heads attempted to latch on to it - from my line of sight it looked like Shinji Okazaki who got the final touch, and fans in Nihondaira held their breath as Okazaki's header beat Gamba keeper Yosuke Fujigaya... and hit the post.

This was an exhilarating affair, and the clash belies a host of claims that the competition should be scrapped. Certainly the timing of fixtures, what with five weeks between the first and second legs of the quarter-finals, needs reviewing. And, yes, both teams were weakened by the absence of international players, although how Shimizu's Kazumichi Takagi was named in the Japan squad only coach Takeshi Okada will know, while Gamba's talisman Yasuhito Endo is a regular in the Japan squad.

Yet those who claim that the League Cup is not worth playing miss the point that the four teams still in contention haven't exactly been picking up trophies left, right and centre over the past few years. It's true that Gamba Osaka are the defending champions, and the Kansai side won the league in 2005, but before that Gamba had simply been making up the numbers for most of their existence in Japanese top flight football.

At any rate, S-Pulse fans were desperate to see their team take a result back to Osaka on September 7. Things started badly though, when long-range specialist Takahiro Futugawa beat Kaito Yamamoto with a pinpoint free-kick after only ten minutes. The rest of the half was the story of Shimizu's season, as the bustling Takuro Yajima and the more subtle Shinji Okazaki fashioned chance after chance, only for poor finishing to let them down.

The hosts got back into the game thanks to a piece of good fortune ten minutes after the restart when Daisuke Ichikawa's shot took a deflection off team-mate Takumi Edamura, which wrong-footed Fujigaya in the Gamba goal. Thereafter both teams had plenty of chances to win it - a rusty Ryuji Bando missed an absolute sitter for Gamba with minutes remaining, but it will be the Shimizu fans who will have gone home crestfallen following this result... although S-Pulse's unused substitute Marcos Aurélio didn't seem too perturbed.

In the other semi-final Kyushu upstarts Oita Trinita held Nagoya Grampus to a 1-1 draw in Nagoya, as veteran Ueslei scored against his former club to cancel out Frode Johnsen's opener. With away goals counting double, the J. League could now find itself hosting a League Cup semi-final between two clubs situated some hundreds of kilometres from the capital.

Both of the last two League Cup finals have attracted colourful, capacity crowds to the National Stadium, and should Shimizu S-Pulse - one of the most popular clubs in the country, meet Nagoya Grampus - seemingly a "sleeping giant" in Japanese football for the entirety of their existence, tickets will invariably sell out in a matter of hours. But with Gamba having struggled to even sell out their allotment of tickets for last season's League Cup final, there is now the distinct possibility that this year's final could be played out against the backdrop of a half-empty "Kokuritsu."

Many will argue that a Gamba - Oita final will go some way to breaking the dominance of teams from the Kantō plain, although neither Shimizu, nor Nagoya can be found in the Kantō region at any rate, but surely J. League officials are hoping for an S-Pulse - Grampus showpiece. Shimizu fans sure are, but having struggled to pick up results at Gamba's Expo '70 Stadium for years now, the cards are stacked against Shimizu S-Pulse turning their disappointing season around.   

How about that Keiji Tamada? You go and criticise the bloke for his useless performances for the national team, and then he goes and scores one of the free-kicks of the season to add to his first half equaliser in Nagoya's pulsating 3-2 win over Shimizu S-Pulse last night.

Speaking of that equaliser, time is surely up for Shimizu's error-prone keeper Yohei Nishibe. The former Urawa shot-stopper was outstanding last season, but he could have done better than to deflect Yoshizumi Ogawa's cross in the first half straight into the path of Tamada.

Nagoya's second equaliser was even worse, with Nishibe flapping at a cross that allowed the diminutive Magnum to head home and make the score 2-2. Then came Tamada's stupendous left-foot free-kick, as Nagoya twice fought back from a goal down to claim a sensational 3-2 win.

The win moves the Toyota-backed outfit back into top spot in the standings, with Dragan Stojkovic's team well placed to break up the usual duopoly of Urawa Reds and Kashima Antlers as the J. League braces itself for an epic finale.  

"Which one of you bitches wants to dance?

Hey, you know when you're doing the usual sort of threesome thing you do of a weekend and, you know, the moonlight's bouncing of your heads and your arses and everything... does that not get a bit confusing?

Right, look, this is you, okay... tra la la la la la la la la la la la laaaaa la la!

Millwall, that's the one. Do you know this chant? Er, Millwall, Millwall you're really dreadful and all your girlfriends are unfulfilled and alienated."

*Whack*

So goes cantankerous bookshop owner Bernard Black's encounter with a trio of Millwall-supporting skinheads in the TV-comedy "Black Books," when Bernard is attempting to get out of doing his taxes by somehow injuring himself.

I have no idea if Millwall's reputation for thuggery is still deserved. Quite frankly I don't even know which division they're in. The last I heard of Millwall their fans were seemingly running amok in Budapest in a UEFA Cup tie against Ferencváros, but as that was a few seasons ago I have no idea whether things have calmed down since then.

One thing I know is that there is not that much to like about Kashiwa Reysol. Their hardcore supporters are a bunch of wannabe hooligans and their football team is not much better. So I was delighted when Shimizu S-Pulse beat Kashiwa Reysol 3-2 at a balmy Nihondaira Stadium last night.

It was a most un-Japanese of fixtures. It got off to an inauspicious start for your's truly, when I stumbled into the ground five minutes after kick-off. I'd like to think there was a more noble cause for my tardiness, but the truth is that I was scoffing down a ham-and-cheese sandwich on the lounge at home, warily eyeing the clock in the knowledge that as every minute passed there was an increasing likelihood that I was about to miss something important. It didn't help that I dropped into the convenience store to buy a couple of beers that I polished off en route.

By the time I arrived, S-Pulse were leading 1-0 thanks to Shinji Okazaki's goal. They made it two when Takuma Edamura stooped to head home at the far post just ten minutes in. Reysol pulled a goal back through Minoru Suganuma - who seemed to react by booting a water bottle into the stand behind the goal... didn't Eddy Bosnar get suspended for that just the other day? - before Kashiwa drew level before half-time from the spot. Now, I might not have had the best of views being about 90 metres away from the action, and it probably doesn't help that I hate Kashiwa Reysol, but from where I was standing it looked as though Reysol striker Franca simply slipped over in the steamy conditions, rather than being pulled down by Keisuke Iwashita. Whatever, the ex-Bayer Leverkusen striker coolly converted the spot-kick as the two teams were locked at 2-2 at the break.

For some reason that I didn't quite catch there was a fireworks display at half-time, and with the wind blowing down from the hills and across the ground, Nihondaira took on an eerie feel as smoke billowed across the pitch. It may or may not have contributed to Shinji Okazaki's second goal - he stuck out a foot to deflect a thunderous cross-come-shot passed Takanori Sugeno, and thereafter the match descended into a kick-fest, with the worst culprit Reysol substitute Alex. He was booting things left, right and centre... and none of them seemed to be the ball. It was hardly surprising when he earned himself a second yellow card for almost snapping off Keisuke Iwashita's leg, and despite the fact that Iwashita appeared to be suffering a near-death experience on the pitch, it didn't stop the mouthy Franca from accusing Iwashita of play-acting, as he tried to lift the prone S-Pulse defender back to his feet.

In the end the victory was wildly celebrated by S-Pulse fans, as it lifts Shimizu above local rivals Jubilo Iwata and into fourteenth place in the standings. It shut Reysol's travelling support up as well, and all the juvenile jibes about Shimizu's family-friendly atmosphere will have meant nothing for the Reysol fans on their long trip back to Chiba. A great night out for S-Pulse fans, then, although I must apologise to Millwall, who surely don't play the kind of anti-football on display from Kashiwa in this one.

The O-bon holidays have prompted an eerie atmosphere around the port city of Shimizu, with the streets deserted as people return to their places of birth to pay homage to the dead.

Outside the footpaths sizzle, with the occasional breeze doing little to cool the simmering summer temperatures, while those that have remained in the town no doubt spending their time in the comfort of air-conditioned indoors.

Ironic, then, that Shimizu S-Pulse will find themselves in a pressure-cooker of an atmosphere come Sunday evening, as they welcome Yokohama F. Marinos down the Pacific coastline to what will be a sold-out Nihondaira Stadium. Only a handful of tickets remain for this clash between 15th placed S-Pulse and their 16th placed port city rivals, in what is a make-or-break game for both teams.

Yokohama F. Marinos recently disposed of coach Takashi Kuwahara - who won championships with Jubilo Iwata, replacing him with novice Kokichi Kimura. To suggest that Kimura's tactics so far have been puzzling would be an understatement to say the least, with Kimura's first order of business to throw Brazilians Lopes and Roni out of his starting eleven (Roni has since joined Gamba Osaka), while pushing dynamic playmaker Koji Yamase into a striking role.

It seems that "positions" are an abstract concept for Kimura, who has happily played midfielders as defenders, defenders as midfielders and, just for good measure, both defenders and midfielders as attackers. The jury is still out on the new man in charge, who only managed to record his first win in the league last weekend. That came in a 2-1 win over Gamba Osaka, who Marinos had coincidentally beaten 2-1 in the second leg of their League Cup quarter-final just days beforehand, although Gamba managed to progress on the away goals rule.    

The Tricolore are in the embarrassing position of occupying the relegation/promotion playoff place, and while many will suggest that the Kanagawa giants are far too good a team to go down - many said the same thing about Sanfrecce Hiroshima last season. A win at Nihondaira, however, would see Marinos leapfrog none other than Shimizu S-Pulse in the standings.

All to play for, then, in what will be a ferocious clash watched by more than 20,000 fans in one of Japan's most pictureseque venues. Fans will no doubt hope for a cool ocean breeze to stir up from the Pacific come kick-off, but there's no doubt that the atmosphere inside Nihondaira will be red-hot, as teams from two of Japan's most important ports clash in this critical fixture. 

After his venomous left-foot free-kick against Kawasaki Frontale helped propel JEF United to the League Cup quarter-finals, Australian defender Eddy Bosnar scored an even more important goal for the Chiba outfit this weekend... particularly as JEF United were knocked out of the League Cup at the quarter-final stage last week.

Despite propping up the J. League table bottom club JEF United out-fought and out-enthused league leaders Kashima Antlers in a 3-1 victory at a packed Fukuda Denshi Arena, with the much-travelled Bosnar - once on the books at Everton - opening the scoring with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, as he smashed home an unerring left-foot free-kick just minutes before half-time. His goal was the lanky defender's first in the league, although in a game of high drama it was barely even the pick of the bunch, as United's talismanic front-man Seiichiro Maki chimed in with two superbly taken headers to give fans in Chiba renewed hope that their team can launch an improbable escape from the drop.

Ex-Liverpool first team coach Alex Miller will no doubt forgive Bosnar his former Everton connections, with Bosnar's Glaswegian tactician praising his side's efforts for the victory against the defending league champions, before pointing out that "it's only one win." Indeed the three points weren't even enough to lift United above second-from-bottom Consadole Sapporo in the standings, and with Yokohama F. Marinos also winning this weekend, things are looking increasingly bleak at the bottom for both JEF United and Consadole Sapporo.

Losing in the League Cup quarter-finals to Nagoya Grampus last week was an added blow for a team that won back-to-back League Cup titles in 2005 and 2006. To add insult to injury United were drawn away at fellow J1 club Shimizu S-Pulse in the Emperor's Cup this year, with a Fourth Round trip to Nihondaira Stadium hardly the easy draw fans were craving this November. By then United may have already said goodbye to top-flight football, as one of only six J. League teams to feature in every season in the Japanese first division looks set for life in J2 next year. They'll need a few more goals from Eddy Bosnar to avoid that fate, but for now the Chiba Dogs are no doubt basking in the glory of one of the most unexpected wins of the season.

It was a lazy headline writer's dream overnight as the J. League continued its haemoraging of big-name Brazilian strikers, with Hulk leaving a club that most people in Europe have never heard of (Tokyo Verdy) to join a club that most people in Europe forget won the UEFA Champions League in 2004 (FC Porto).

Practically every single online news outlet across the globe greeted the signing with the news that Porto had signed "the incredible Hulk," although perhaps the most incredible thing about the bustling Brazilian was his penchant for spectacular tantrums.

After running the Urawa Reds defence ragged in Verdy's recent 3-2 loss to the Reds at Saitama Stadium, Hulk was incensed at his 73rd minute substitution by coach Tetsuji Hashiratani. Cue his usual outburst, which resulted in Hulk returning to Brazil - apparently to oversee the birth of his child, at least according to Tokyo Verdy.

Now the much-travelled striker has lobbed up at FC Porto, and the ex-European champions will do well to rein in the giant striker's combustible temperament. After joining Kawasaki Frontale in 2005, Hulk was loaned out to Second Division club Consadole Sapporo where he blasted home 25 goals in 38 league games. With Sapporo unable to meet Hulk's hefty wage demands the burly Brazilian then found himself at Tokyo Verdy, whom he fired back to the top flight with an even more impressive 37 goals in 42 games. Some 62 goals in two seasons in J2 was enough to prompt Kawasaki to recall Hulk for the 2008 season, but after playing just three games he was promptly sold to Tokyo Verdy, with Kawasaki officials claiming that Hulk had had a negative impact on the Frontale dressing room.

Now the 22-year-old will be hoping to make his mark on European football, but with Verdy having hardly missed the Brazilian in their most recent 2-1 win over Kashiwa Reysol - in which ex-Torino striker Masashi Oguro turned in an impressive performance alongside strike partner Kazuki Hiramoto, Hulk may need to buckle down as he seeks to have an impact in Portugal.

Gamba Osaka striker Bare has signed a lucrative deal with United Arab Emirates outfit Al Ahli.

The scorer of 44-top flight goals with Ventforet Kofu and Gamba Osaka is the second high-profile striker to leave mid-season in as many years, after Magno Alves departed for Saudi side Al-Ittihad following Gamba's victory over Kawasaki Frontale in the League Cup final last year. 

The tormentor of Melbourne Victory in the AFC Champions League, Bare's departure could spell a worrying trend for Japanese football, which does not have the cash to compete financially with the oil-rich gulf states. 

His loss will also spell trouble for Gamba Osaka, for whom striker Ryuji Bando has been sidelined through injury for much of the campaign. 

The burly Brazilian is the J. League's second top scorer this season behind Kashima's Marquinhos, having found the net ten times from eighteen league appearances.