57,050 fans turned out at Saitama Stadium on May 17 to watch the high-profile J. League clash between Urawa Reds and Gamba Osaka. Not all of them liked what they saw.

Played in a tinderbox atmosphere, the match exploded into life - and controversy, a minute before half-time. Under pressure from Urawa defender Yuki Abe, Gamba's Brazilian striker Bare seemingly played the ball into touch adjacent to the corner flag. Ever the quick-thinker, Bare simply picked the ball up and threw it to the feet of Takahiro Futagawa. While Abe and his fellow Urawa defenders protested to referee Masayoshi Okada, Futagawa fed Masato Yamazaki to nonchalantly sweep the ball home in front of the Urawa home end. That handed Gamba a 2-0 half-time lead.

The record books will show that Gamba eventually went on to win 3-2, thanks in no small part to a majestic third from Yasuhito Endo that helped the Osakans to break their Saitama hoodoo. Yet few were talking about the result come the end of the match.

That's because in a fit of childish petulance the Urawa players demanded that Gamba halt their post-match celebrations, which consisted of nothing more than jumping around inside the centre circle. Gamba's decision to celebrate in front of the away end at the behest of the enraged Reds did little to reduce the tension. Indeed, it seemed to fuel it.

It's difficult to single out individual Urawa players when the entire squad seemed take part in the scuffle that ensued, yet two players should come under particular scrutiny. They are Urawa goalkeeper Ryota Tsuzuki and defensive midfielder Marcos Tulio Tanaka. Above all else, the actions of these two players endangered the lives of fans packed into the goal at the away end.

Tsuzuki is an ex-Gamba player, yet he was infuriated by the loss, and was repeatedly restrained by his team-mates from seemingly trying to attack his former colleagues. Marcos Tulio Tanaka is renowned as one of the most passionate players in Japanese football, yet he too overstepped the mark, although in Gamba's Bare he for once found an adversary who was not afraid to back down from a fight.

By now the action on the pitch was a mere sideshow to the chaos taking place on the terraces. The boorish behaviour of Urawa's spoilt fans has long been a bone of contention for fans of rival J. League clubs. However the Reds fans went well beyond their usual jeering, as several of them attempted to tear down the fence that separated the two sets of supporters. Some Gamba fans responded by raining projectiles down on their counterparts - not the smartest of moves, as the police watched on helplessly.

In the mayhem that followed one Gamba fan was reportedly injured attempting to scale the fence, while the Reds fans themselves managed to tear down a section of the partition and were only held back by a desperate line of police. One Reds fan lobbed what appeared to be a steel flagpole into the Gamba section. The footage was eagerly seized upon and broadcast all over the nightly news.

It's not a good look for the J. League, which is precisely why in their English-language round-up there is not a single mention of the fan violence. Any hopes that the J. League had of keeping the crowd disturbances quiet are dashed by the fact that an army of savvy fans filmed it from a variety of angles and duly uploaded it to YouTube.

The irony is that when quizzed on the topic of hooliganism, most Japanese football fans will quickly link it to English football. Yet hooliganism was all but stamped out of English football twenty years ago. While clashes between rivals fans still occur, they are generally staged events that take place away from football stadia. They are not the kind of incidents that endanger the general public in front of a police force that has little experience in crowd control.

While Gamba fans are not blameless in this incident, the J. League should throw the book at Urawa for the actions of their fans. Even after the incident had died down, some 5,000 Urawa fans waited outside the ground for up to three hours for the beleaguered Gamba supporters to emerge, before police finally convinced the Reds fans to disperse.

Having offered Urawa favourable treatment for so long, the J. League must now reckon with the monster that they have created. The Reds players and a large section of their support consider themselves above the J. League. A home defeat is now cause for a mini-riot. Opposition celebrations are tantamount to a declaration of war. How did this happen?

Urawa Reds may be lauded for the size of their crowds or their sizeable profits, but unless the J. League treads very, very carefully, then the Saitama club could soon become the straw that breaks the camel's back. No one can say that the J. League hasn't been warned.

It took Urawa Reds all of two matches to sack coach Holger Osieck and replace him with Gert Engels. Reds fans could be forgiven a sense of déjà vu - not because of the sacking, but because like Osieck before him, Engels is a familiar face within the Urawa camp. He's been at the club since 2004, but has surely leapt from the frying pan into the fire as he takes over as head coach at a club simmering with internal dissent.

The Reds have been outplayed in each of their opening two matches, losing firstly to Yokohama F. Marinos in front of more than 62,000 fans at Nissan Stadium, before just under 55,000 fans turned out at Saitama Stadium to see Nagoya Grampus snatch all three points from a club that is quickly becoming one of their favourite opponents.

Speaking of Nagoya, Pixy Stojkovic is yet to spontaneously combust on the Grampus touchline, although the exciteable Serb has shown signs that the only thing left of him could be a smouldering pair of shoes come the end of the J. League season. He was reportedly furious after Nagoya's opening 1-1 draw at home to Kyoto Sanga, in a match in which the visitors outplayed their more fancied opponents. Nevertheless following Nagoya's defeat of Urawa the diminutive former Grampus midfielder claimed that it was one of the best days of his life, leading one to ponder how Stojkovic might react if Nagoya actually won a trophy.

The topsy-turvy results continued on day two of the J. League, with the pick of the scores surely Vissel Kobe's 4-1 hammering of Kawasaki Frontale. Indeed Kawasaki's much-vaunted strike force hasn't looked remotely close to scoring yet, with coach Takashi Sekizuka suddenly the last to have realised that fitting Juninho, Hulk, Chong Tese, Kazuki Ganaha and Masaru Kurotsu into three striking places is not necessarily one of those "difficult selection scenarios that the club is happy to have."

With the League Cup taking centre stage for Matchday 1 and 2 of the group stage next Thursday and Sunday, certain clubs will invariably look to tinker with their line-ups in the hope of discovering a winning formation. Others will just be desperate for a win - foremost among them Urawa Reds, as they head into the Gert Engels era more quickly than anyone could have imagined.

I read an interesting article over at the Kicker Magazin website yesterday about the transfer of Urawa Reds midfielder Makoto Hasebe to German Bundesliga side VfL Wolfsburg. Hasebe has been a lynchpin of the Urawa side for the past two seasons, but with his contract having expired, the 23-year-old has decided to try his luck in Europe.

According to Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath, Hasebe has been on the club's radar for some two years now. Magath claimed that the club's scouts had been interested in Hasebe since early 2006. But I wonder.

Certainly Hasebe did well enough to attract the attention of at least one European club, with Serie A strugglers Siena widely linked with the out-of-contract Reds star towards the end of 2007. Their interest came to naught though, with the Tuscans instead signing Brazilian goalkeeper Artur Moraes and soon-to-be Socceroo striker Richard Porta during the January transfer window.

That Hasebe chose to sign for a Bundesliga side comes as no surprise, given that his former coach at Urawa is none-other-than 1990 World Cup winner Guido Buchwald. Indeed, Hasebe's best season with Urawa came when the Reds lifted the J-League title under Buchwald in 2006. Yet I can't help but feel that the decision to sign Hasebe is as much an attempt to lift Wolfsburg's global profile, as it is one designed to strengthen their midfield.

Coach Magath has claimed that he envisages Hasebe to be a defensive midfielder in a two-man shield in front of the back four. Yet Wolfsburg already have two defensive midfielders in the form of Christian Gentner and Brazilian international Josué. The highly experienced Guinean Pablo Thiam is also standing in Hasebe's way.

Should Hasebe wish to break into the Wolfsburg starting eleven, then he'll invariably need to work on his physical strength. The 1.77 metre-midfielder was repeatedly knocked off the ball when Urawa came up against Milan in the recent FIFA Club World Cup, and he'll no longer have the intuitive Keita Suzuki by his side to clean up his mistakes. Indeed it's a wonder that no European clubs have made a more concerted effort to sign Suzuki, given that he's so clearly the most influential player in the Urawa line-up.

Of course pre-judging Hasebe's European career before a ball has even been kicked is hardly fair. It's just that history is not on his side. Of the Japanese players who have gone before him, only the exceptional Shunsuke Nakamura has shone in European football. Naohiro Takahara scored eleven league goals for Eintracht Frankfurt last season, only to up-and-leave for Urawa as soon as Frankfurt brought in some competition up front.

Mitsuo Ogasawara is perhaps a better example. He played over 200 games for Kashima Antlers, yet played just six times while on loan at Italian club Messina. He then returned to Kashima midway through the 2007 J-League season and promptly fired the Ibaraki club to the J-League title.

To suggest that Hasebe won't be the only foreign player at Wolfsburg would be an understatement, given that he becomes the SIXTEENTH different nationality at the club this season. But he'll need to adjust to the language and the food quick-smart. He'll also have to adjust from playing in a side that is perennially challenging for the league title, to one that is conceivably battling against relegation this season.

Perhaps the 2008-09 season is a more realistic timeline for Hasebe to break in to the Wolfsburg team. By then Christian Gentner could possibly return to VfB Stuttgart - who loaned him to Wolfsburg, while Pablo Thiam's contract is set to expire. Wolfburg's financial position will also play a role, given that the club spent a whopping 30 million euros on players last summer, and are so far yet to see any tangible returns. Wolfsburg won't be in Europe next season, but at the very least, Makoto Hasebe will hope to be.

That's quite a team they've got brewing up there at Saitama Stadium. Evidently finishing second in the J-League didn't go down too well with the biggest club on earth last season. So they've dangled 1.5million euros in the face of Eintracht Frankfurt and snatched Naohiro Takahara from the Hessen club.

Takahara's transfer is a bit of a strange one. The former Hamburger SV man wasn't especially thrilled with Frankfurt's signing of Czech striker Martin Fenin this January, but then a cynic might suggest that one way to answer his critics might be for Takahara to get fit and start banging in the goals for Frankfurt again. He banged them in last season. But then, Takahara has always been a fits-and-spurts kind of guy.

Anyway, the 28-year-old will be back in the J-League next season. He's a high profile player, so his signing is likely to regenerate a bit of interest in a league that has stagnated somewhat of late. How Takahara fits in to a strike force that already contains Tatsuya Tanaka, Yuichiro Nagai and the newly-signed Edmilson is anyone's guess, although Nagai already looks the odd-man-out in that foursome.

Urawa have been doing a fair bit of wheeling and dealing this winter, and given the funds available to the club, that's really no surprise. The Reds are trying to offload the eternally-injured Shinji Ono, but a quick physical by Ruhr-strugglers VfL Bochum revealed what everyone in Japan already knows - Ono hasn't got the knees for the professional game any more.

The Reds have apparently signed Oita Trinita midfielder Tsukasa Umesaki for a whopping 300 million yen, although where Umesaki fits in to the Urawa line-up is anyone's guess. Urawa will have to make do without injured playmaker Robson Ponte for up to six months, while Makoto Hasebe is apparently on his way to Serie A outfit Siena. Yet with ex-Japan international Alex reportedly on the verge of a move back to Urawa from Salzburg, the highly-rated Umesaki could find his chances at Urawa limited.

That's not likely to be a problem for Naohiro Takahara. Still, you could forgive the cynics among us for chanting "are you Chelsea in disguise?" the next time the Reds machine rumbles in to town.

With referee Yuichi Nishimura's whistle bringing an end to Kashima Antlers 3-0 demolition of Shimizu S-Pulse, Kashima players streamed on to the pitch, while coach Oswaldo de Oliveira pumped his fists in celebration. Suddenly the players stopped on the half-way line, transfixed by the video screen beaming images from Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. The match between bottom club Yokohama FC and defending champions Urawa Reds was still in progress. Score? Yokohama FC 1, Urawa 0.

For three agonising minutes the Kashima fans watched as Yokohama FC hoofed long balls forward, mimicking Rugby players as they attempted to find touch at every opportunity. Suddenly Toshimitsu Yoshida blew full-time at Nissan Stadium, and as the Urawa players dropped to their knees, pandemonium erupted inside Kashima Stadium.

Kashima Antlers are the 2007 J-League champions, after a day of sheer drama across Japan. The Ibaraki giants moved to the top of the table for the first time on the only day that matters, as they claimed their fifth J-League title, and reiterated that for all the misplaced media hype, they truly are the most successful team in Japanese football.

After a start to the season so poor that coach Oswaldo de Oliveira was under intense pressure, Kashima turned things around thanks in no part to the return of mercurial midfielder Mitsuo Ogasawara from a failed spell at Italian club Messina. Ogasawara was immense against Shimizu, leading his team around the park in a manner that suggests that new Japan coach Takeshi Okada can ill-afford to overlook him for national team duty.

Yet Kashima's win was a triumph of attacking football over the dour style favoured by Urawa coach Holger Osieck. The two sides could hardly have experienced a more contrasting change of fortunes, with Kashima embarking on a club-record nine match winning run to claim the title at the death, whilst Urawa picked up just three points from the fifteen on offer in their last five J-League matches. The defending Emperor's Cup champions were also knocked out of that competition by J2 strugglers Ehime FC last Wednesday, and their loss to Yokohama FC capped an utterly miserable week for the Saitama side.

Urawa must now regroup for the upcoming FIFA Club World Cup in Japan, where they could face Iranian side Sepahan in a re-match of the recent AFC Champions League final, in which Urawa lifted their first ever continental crown. All the plaudits belong to Kashima Antlers, however. In a season in which the J-League proved once again that it is surely one of the most exhilarating competitions in world football, Kashima proved that perhaps, after all, slow and steady truly does win the race.

Half of Japan's football fans may have been sporting a wry smile on Saturday night. The other half are Urawa fans, and they were no doubt bemoaning Urawa's most recent 1-0 loss to Kashima Antlers in front of 62,123 fans at Saitama Stadium; a result that once again throws the title race wide open.

Cynical keyboard warriors like myself could perhaps be forgiven a bout of Schadenfreude after Urawa's German coach Holger Osieck was quick to point out how many players he was missing through injury in the wake of the defeat. Far be it for Urawa to ever admit being outplayed - they've been one of the most boring teams in Japanese football all season, preferring to wear down their opponents and grind out results instead.

Last season Urawa played a swashbuckling style under popular coach Guido Buchwald. The former German international tipped his hat and bid adieu to take over at 2.Bundesliga club Alemannia Aachen last January, and the red half of Saitama has seen their previous attacking style replaced with clinical (i.e. boring) efficiency under ex-Canada coach Osieck.

At any rate, perhaps the J-League was hoping that Urawa would wrap up the title at Saitama Stadium after all? Referee Kenji Ogiya had apparently already ordered his "Urawa - 2007 Champions" commemorative t-shirt - he sent off both Toru Araiba and Yuji Funayama for no apparent reason other than that they play for Kashima. It wasn't enough, as the nine-men Antlers held on for a famous 1-0 win.

If Kashima beat Shimizu S-Pulse at Kashima Stadium next weekend and Urawa fail to beat Yokohama FC at Nissan Stadium, then it is Kashima - and not Urawa, who will be crowned 2007 J-League champions. Of course, with 50,000 Urawa fans likely to outnumber the "home" fans by about ten thousand to one, there's more chance of me being picked for The Socceroos then there is of Yokohama FC beating Urawa. Still, stranger things have happened... like Urawa failing to win the league title at Saitama Stadium, for example.

Kashima Stadium will be packed next weekend as well, but one thing is for sure - there's no way they'll be outdancing the Yajima Fan Club! Shimizu experienced a bizarre afternoon at Nihondaira Stadium last Saturday. They went behind to an absolute peach of a goal from striker Seiichiro Maki, who if memory serves me correctly, last scored around the time that the Ice Age ended.

Jungo Fujimoto took it upon himself to level up proceedings, dancing passed two defenders before smashing an unstoppable drive that Tomonori Tateishi barely saw as it flashed into the net. Referee Hajime Matsuo then took centre stage, sending off United defender Daisuke Saito for a bookable offence after just eighteen minutes. Saito was the last man when he clipped Korean star Cho Jae-Jin's heel, but the decision to hand Saito a straight red card may have been slightly harsh - his collision with Jae-Jin looked accidental. Nevertheless Matsuo should be applauded for applying the letter of the law, when too often J-League referees have turned a blind eye to goalscoring opportunities being blatantly denied.

The send off left United to battle on with ten men, but it failed to hinder one of the goals of the season. On sixty-four minutes, JEF United defender Nenad Djordevic spotted Shimizu goalkeeper Yohei Nishibe off his line. As the ball broke to him in midfield, the Serb simply hammered a shot in on goal, and the 18,577 fans in attendance watched breathlessly as Djordevic's strike from inside his own half sailed over Nishibe's head and into the net. The Yajima Fan Club was not impressed!

Elsewhere Omiya Ardija virtually guaranteed their top flight status with a 2-1 win away at neighbours FC Tokyo, with defender Leandro challenging Nenad Djordevic in the Goal Of The Season stakes with a stunning, solo stoppage time winner. Ventforet Kofu were relegated after losing 2-1 away at Kashiwa Reysol, and for all the obvious refereeing vendettas against them, sceptics will point to the fact that Kofu have scored only 33 goals in 33 games - despite employing more strikers than I do bad metaphors. Sanfrecce Hiroshima will almost certainly play J2 side Kyoto Sanga FC in the promotion/relegation playoff match, but all eyes will be on Yokohama and Kashima next weekend, where either the Reds or the Antlers will be crowned 2007 J-League champions.

There were plenty of highlights for Shimizu S-Pulse fans when the J-League draw was made last January. The derby with Jubilo always takes precedence, but the Round 32 clash with Urawa Reds at Saitama Stadium was also a stand-out fixture. As one of the lucky few to score a ticket in the away end at Saitama, I thought I'd share with you some of my experiences, in what was essentially a day in the life of a J-League fan.

The day starts early. For dedicated fans of clubs like Oita Trinita or Consadole Sapporo, an away match means a trip to Japan's main island of Honshu and often an entire weekend of travel. For me, this match meant an early Sunday morning rise - the official S-Pulse organised tour bus left Shimizu station just before 5am! Domestic rail travel in Japan is expensive, particularly on the Shinkansen, so for the money-conscious the choice often falls between driving or taking one of the club-organised tour buses to the stadium.

Normally bus travel is something I look upon as a necessary evil. I've travelled the length and breadth of England quite comfortably on National Express coaches, but then National Express coaches don't have a habit of arriving at their destination six hours early!

Japan is nothing if not a unique place, and one of the peculiarities of its upstanding citizens is their willingness - scratch that, desire, to line up! These guys would beat the English in a Olympics Queue-Off hands down, and in anticipation of a 2pm kick-off, it was with a heavy heart that I disembarked from the bus at the ungodly hour of 8am! Being a self-proclaimed man of the world there was little to do but whip out a newspaper and catch up on yesterday's news.

"Why do people line up so early to enter the stadium?" you might reasonably ask. It has to do with the fact that General Admission is a popular concept in Japan. That is to say that many fans buy non-numbered tickets - reserved seating in Japan is usually the last to sell-out, and will then arrive at the stadium hours in advance in the hope of scoring the best seats available. While most fans use the long wait as an excuse to put on an impromptu picnic, I can't help but feel that the method takes away from some of the more ritualistic elements of attending a match.

Saitama Stadium is one of those super modern arenas built on the outskirts of town that FIFA seem to prefer these days. There's no chance of a quick pre-match pint - the stadium lies in a middle of a field literally miles from the city centre, and any hopes I had of enjoying an early afternoon brew in the beer garden (okay, plastic tables and chairs put out on the stadium forecourt) were dashed by the fact that I didn't want to be the only fan whose view was obscured by an errant pillar. So I piled in with the rest of my early-morning bus-trippers and spent several hours watching the shadows creep slowly across the pitch.

Both sets of supporters set about creating an atmosphere, with Shimizu's away end packed by around 3,000 travelling fans. Yet the atmosphere from the Urawa fans was strangely lacklustre, not the least because most of those in the reserved seating seemed to take their seats only moments before kick-off. Even then, those fans remained quiet for most of the match - it was hardly the kind of welcome one would expect for a team that had just been crowned continental champions, with only the wall of Urawa fans behind the goal making concerted efforts to lift their team.

Those efforts began to diminish as soon as Shimizu S-Pulse began to take the upper hand. Indeed, the Urawa fans seemed to spend more time jeering opposition players who happened to be in possession of the ball, than they did cheering on their own team. It didn't help that one of Urawa's best players, Keita Suzuki, had to be substituted after just seventeen minutes, nor did it help that Washington was suspended, while Nobuhisa Yamada, Tatsuya Tanaka and Shinji Ono were all injured. Yet for a club that is so quick to trumpet its depth, and one that so eagerly proclaims its fans to be the best in Japan - Urawa were being out-played both on and off the pitch, as every hoofed long ball forward from ex-Hertha Berlin defender Fabio Nene brought ironic cheers from the Shimizu fans.

The match ultimately ended in a 0-0 draw - the second time I've seen a scoreless draw at Saitama Stadium this season, after Urawa's cynical 0-0 draw with Sydney FC in the AFC Champions League. Both teams had chances; Marcus Tulio Tanaka going agonisingly wide with a header in the opening stages, while Ryota Tsuzuki pulled off a miraculous stop after Fernandinho found himself one-on-one with the Urawa shot-stopper in the last minute of play.

Urawa now go on to face second-placed Kashima Antlers in what is a clash of the titans at Saitama Stadium next weekend. For me, I went straight back on to the bus. Any notion that perhaps the vast majority of Urawa fans really do come from the city of Saitama were dispelled by the bumper-to-bumper traffic that clogged the highway all the way through the megalopolis that is Tokyo, and out on to the Tomei Expressway that winds down the Pacific coastline. The bright lights of the big city were blurred by my tired eyes - I had a headache, and I was hungry. But after one of the biggest days on the Shimizu S-Pulse fan calendar ended in somewhat of an anti-climax, there's no doubt that given the chance, I would do it all again.

Well, it had to happen. Urawa Reds have been crowned Asian champions, and who could begrudge them? Yes they played boring, cynical football to reach the final, but in the end they were too strong for Iranian side Sepahan - who knocked Kawasaki Frontale out at the quarter-final stage.

I haven't had time (okay, I mean "the desire") to read the morning headlines but I can guess what they say. In fact, I thought I'd help out by writing my own report and seeing if I can't get it on the global news wires.

Urawa Reds crowned Asia's best, most likely to become America's Next Top Model

Urawa Reds have won the AFC Champions League after beating Iranian side Sepahan 2-0 in front of 59,034 fans at Saitama Stadium in the second leg of the final.

Yuichiro Nagai's clinical first half strike calmed the nerves of the more than 60,000 fans inside the stadium, and when Yuki Abe struck with twenty minutes remaining, the capacity crowd of 65,000 rose as one to celebrate the first ever victory by a Japanese team in the AFC Champions League.

Jubiliant Urawa fans claimed outside the ground that the Saitama club's win vindicated their belief that the Reds were the most important team in the history of football.

"I'm just so happy that my local team could prove to the world that we are the best!" screamed one fan.

"It took me four hours to travel up on the local train from Hamamatsu, but it was worth it!"

Another claimed that the size of the crowd proved that football was truly on the map in Japan.

"We are the only team in this city," said the fan.

"The fact that 70,000 fans turned out for this match just proves that there's a market for football in this country. I used to be a fan of the Yomiuri Giants, but now they're boring... and named after a newspaper!"

Urawa officials have confirmed that they now plan to build a stadium on the moon.

One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed that after winning the Club World Cup next month, the next step was domination of the galaxy.

"We had over 75,000 fans turn out for the home leg of the Champions League final," said the official."

"It's only natural that we use the moon as the base for our intergalactic missions."

Urawa could face Sepahan again at the FIFA Club World Cup, before going on to face European minnows AC Milan in the semi-finals of that competition.

"Playing Milan will be boring," said one fan on the trip back to his home town of Mito.

"I just can't wait to see Urawa win the Miss Universe competition next year."

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Anyway, if that doesn't make it on to the wires, you can always read a much better report here.

A near sell-out crowd, a clash between two titans, a history-making encounter. Or not? Just two hours before Urawa Reds come face-to-face with K-League side Seongnam Chunma Ilhwa in the second leg of their hotly anticipated AFC Champions League semi-final, grumblings continue to rumble about the revisionist nature of some media reports pertaining to the match.

In a piece circulated around the globe through Reuters, Urawa Reds, it was claimed, would become the first Japanese team to reach the final of Asia's "premier club competition" if they managed to overcome Seongnam in the semi-final. As many fans on message boards across the world have rightly pointed out, Urawa might become the first Japanese team to reach the final of the newly rebranded AFC Champions League, but they are certainly not the first Japanese team to reach the final of a continental competition in Asia.

Whilst the forerunners to the modern-day JEF United and Tokyo Verdy both won the old "Asian Club Cup" in their pre J-League incarnations, the club seemingly most hard done by in the rush to proclaim new glory, is Jubilo Iwata. Not only did they win the old Asian Club Cup as recently as 1999, but they also reached the next two finals in a row as well.

Now that the AFC Champions League has been revamped to take on a look that more closely resembles the format of the UEFA Champions League, does that mean that the history of the Asian Club Cup should be forgotten? Has the success of teams like Steaua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade suddenly been forgotten - teams that in the current European climate now have virtually no chance of ever tasting continental success again, simply because the European Cup changed its name?

In its rush to modernise, the Asian Football Confederation is in danger of eliminating its past. That might be the aim. Yet no amount of revisionism will change the fact that in 1994 and 1995, Asia's premier club team was the now defunct Thai Farmers Bank FC. Perhaps there was more to Saburo Kawabuchi's claim earlier this year that AFC Champions League must become "more like the European Champions League." Perhaps what he meant was that the future of Asian football lies only in glamour clubs like Urawa Reds and Seongnam Chunma, and not in obscure minnows with unflattering names, like Thai Farmers Bank FC.

Win, lose or draw tonight - Urawa's participation in this season's AFC Champions League has certainly brought much needed exposure to the competition. It would be a shame, however, if it has done so at the expense of history.

The first day of autumn brought derby day delight for Shimizu S-Pulse and Omiya Ardija, as the two away teams won the Shizuoka and Saitama derby respectively.

Thousands of orange clad supporters made the seventy kilometre trip to Ecopa Stadium in Fukuroi to see their team take on bitter local rivals Jubilo Iwata.

Shimizu won 2-1 thanks to a Cho Jae-Jin brace earlier in the season, and S-Pulse did the double over their local rivals when the Korean striker scored a last minute goal to hand Shimizu a 1-0 victory.

The win sees Shimizu move to within a point of third placed Kashima Antlers on the table. 

The real story was at Saitama Stadium, however, where a crowd of 49,910 watched mainly in disbelief as second-from-bottom Omiya Ardija kept their season alive by beating city neighbours and league leaders Urawa Reds.

Hiroshi Morita scored the only goal of the game on the hour mark to hand Omiya a result that has implications at both ends of the table. With Gamba Osaka thrashing an injury-ridden Nagoya Grampus Eight 4-1 at Mizuho, the Osakans have pulled themselves back to within a point of league leaders Urawa. Omiya Ardija, meanwhile, are now just one point behind fifteenth placed Oita Trinita after yet another absorbing round of J-League action.