Don't let the snappy title fool you. This is no laughing matter. Yuki Abe has moved to Urawa Reds. And the fate of the entire Universe may rest upon his shoulders.

Not really, although a lot of people here in Japan were kind of disappointed that Yuki Abe has joined the dark side, setting a record for the highest fee paid for a Japanese player in a domestic transfer in the process. It's not that they begrudge Abe success - after eight years at JEF United, you could hardly begrudge the man anything - it's just that some J-League fans are claiming that Urawa are strengthening their team, by dismantling others. Hey, if it works for Chelsea, it could work anywhere!

After virtually single-handedly (or should that be, single-footedly?) firing JEF United to successive League Cup crowns, Yuki Abe virtually WAS the team at JEF United. His sale may have raised around $US3 million dollars, but it has left United without their talisman. Curiously, they've chosen to remedy this by getting rid of half their squad, although the fact that most of those players were entirely useless was probably a solid basis for doing so.

In other news, there have been several more juicy transfers in the J-League so far. Paulo Wanchope to FC Tokyo! Takayuki Suzuki to Yokohama F. Marinos! Yoshito Okubo to Vissel Kobe! The entire Jubilo Iwata over-30's brigade to another team! None of these matter. No, my friends...the only transfer that matters, is former Espanyol and Bolton striker Akinori Nishizawa's move to Shimizu S-Pulse.

It seems that the S-Pulse management have heeded my calls to get rid of Marquinhos. That's probably because I persisted in making those calls about five metres away from the S-Pulse bench. Marquinhos will be diving and writhing in agony for Kashima Antlers next season - just his fifth club in his long and loyal six year career in the J-League so far. He will be replaced by none other than Nishizawa himself, a player that struck fear into the hearts of every fan sitting in Row F last season, with his wayward finishing and strange hairstyles.

Fear not, Akinori. I have faith. And what's more, I don't even sit in Row F.

Internacional have won. Ronaldinho has gone home. The stands have all been cleared. But if you listen closely, you'll notice that the football fields of Japan are still resonating - not quite to the sounds of samba, but to football nonetheless. For the Emperor's Cup has rolled into town, and if you happen to be Urawa Reds, it looks like it will be staying there for quite some time.

The quarter-finalists for this year's Emperor's Cup have been decided, after some fascinating encounters in the recent Round of 16. The JFA have found a new way to meddle with the Cup draw this season, awarding home ties to all First Division clubs when they entered the field in Round 4. No surprises then, that seven of the eight clubs that have made it to the quarter-finals are J1 teams.

The one exception are J2 club Consadole Sapporo. After overcoming reigning League Cup holders JEF United in Round 4, the northerners then battled their way to a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Albirex Niigata in the Round of 16. Their reward is a tie against Ventforet Kofu, who hammered Kawasaki Frontale 5-2 in their Round of 16 encounter. Thanks to the vagaries of the JFA's scheduling format, the Sapporo - Kofu tie will take place at Yurtec Stadium, home of Sapporo's J2 rivals Vegalta Sendai.

It's not a subject that I profess to be an expert on, but for some reason, the JFA schedules a number of Emperor's Cup matches per round in various regional cities throughout Japan. I think that it's a noble and worthwhile idea to expose towns that don't have professional clubs to big-time football. Towns and cities such as Okayama, Nagasaki and Marugame all successfully hosted matches in the Round of 16. But I begin to scratch my head when I see Sapporo take on Kofu in Sendai. I also struggle to comprehend why Gamba Osaka would take on Yokohama F. Marinos at the dilapidated Universiade Memorial Stadium in Kobe, when the town of Kobe just witnessed its own club win promotion to the top flight! But that's football in Japan.

In its convoluted way, the draw is supposed to offer some semblence of fairness, with each club supposedly receiving at least one home match each. That semblence of fairness tends to disintegrate, however, when you realise that Urawa Reds have been handed a home tie for ALL of their Emperor's Cup matches! So much for the spirit of the underdog! If there was one club in Japan that doesn't need help from above, it's Urawa.

Having said that, it's not as though the clubs that do play the majority of their Emperor's Cup matches at home draw large crowds. Knock-out football doesn't tend to grip this country until New Year's Day, when a packed National Stadium in Tokyo rocks as the two Emperor's Cup finalists do battle. The Emperor's Cup is, after all, the oldest sporting tournament still in existence in Japan, and the final has traditionally been played on New Year's Day since 1969.

Anyway, I'm probably just sore because my team, Shimizu S-Pulse, are playing over a thousand kilometres away in Kumamoto, on Japan's southernmost island Kyushu. Shimizu saw off FC Tokyo 3-2 in extra-time in the last round, and they meet Kashima Antlers this weekend, after Kashima saw off Nagoya Grampus Eight 2-1. The final match-up sees Urawa Reds take on Jubilo Iwata at - you guessed it, Saitama Stadium, for a place in the semi-finals.

Urawa Reds are the 2006 J-League champions, after they saw off Gamba Osaka 3-2 in front of 62,241 fans at Saitama Stadium on Saturday. The final whistle saw an outpouring of emotion from the club's fans, who had not only witnessed the Reds lose the 2004 Championship Series final on penalties to Yokohama F. Marinos, but also finish runner-up amidst chaotic scenes on the final day of the 2005 season. It was a case of third time lucky for Urawa, who were ultimately deserving winners of their first ever league trophy.

Not everyone, however, seems to be enamoured with the Urawa brand. For one thing, the club has a reputation for housing some of the more brusque fans in the league. Others have pointed to the financial clout of the Mitsubishi-backed club, arguing that they have enhanced their squad by signing the likes of Washington and Takahito Soma from Tokyo Verdy, and bringing Shinji Ono back from Feyenoord, to the detriment of their own young players. Personally I don't buy it.

The club certainly does have some of the more aggressive fans in the league. But given that their smallest crowd at Saitama Stadium this season was 34,417 - ironically against the league's other big crowd-puller, Albirex Niigata, the law of averages suggests that you might find one or two more vehement fans than you would at other grounds. Besides, these are football fans and as football fans ourselves, we can hardly criticise them for their passion. The same fans did, after all, continue to support the club en masse when Urawa was relegated at the end of the 1999 season.

As for buying players like Washington and Soma, Urawa was just doing what every successful club in every league in the world does, namely cherry-picking the best players from one of their relegated opponents. Few have begrudged Urawa's crosstown rivals Omiya Ardija for having done likewise, given that ex-Tokyo Verdy players Daigo and Yoshiyuki Kobayashi were arguably Omiya's best players this season. That Urawa bought Washington simply proved to be a wise choice, given that he ended the season as the J-League's equal top scorer with Gamba's Magno Alves, while Soma's decision to join Japan's biggest club was understandable.

Re-signing Shinji Ono from Feyenoord demonstrates, if nothing else, that the club maintains cordial relations with their former players. It is hardly Urawa's fault that their first eleven played so well throughout the season that Ono struggled to get a run. Kazuyuki Toda, for example, could seemingly hardly wait to get away from Shimizu S-Pulse when his loan spell at Tottenham Hotspur didn't herald a permanent deal, despite Shimizu being in desperate need of his combative services.

Speaking of Toda, he was one of the key figures in the match that I attended at Nihondaira Stadium on Saturday afternoon. These days Toda plies his trade with Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who happened to be the visitors to Shimizu's atmospheric ground. Toda was given a frosty reception by the Shimizu faithful, that surpassed even the bone-chilling wind blowing down off the hills that surround the stadium. Those fans were apoplectic in their delight, however, when the feisty Toda was given his marching orders after just twenty minutes, following two late tackles. The second prompted an acrobatic tumble from South Korean striker Cho Jae Jin but in truth, Toda should have known better, and he melodramatically removed his jersey as he trudged from the field, to the delight of the otherwise freezing Shimizu fans.

Shimizu eventually won the match 3-0, and more importantly overtook their bitter rivals Jubilo Iwata on the final J-League standings. But the day and the accolades belonged to Urawa Reds. It has been a long wait for the club, and they will say sayonara to their popular German coach Guido Buchwald, who departs at the end of the season to spend more time with his family. The title drought is finally over, however, and Urawa fans will hope that the club has the depth to fly the flag all the way for Japan, in next season's Asian Champions League.

Alan Hansen means many things to many people. For some, he will be remembered as an elegant defender for both Liverpool and Scotland. For others, he is the slightly smug counterpoint to the clean cut Gary Lineker on "Match Of The Day." For me - and no doubt many others, he will always be the pundit who memorably quipped, "you'll never win anything with kids." The trouble, for Hansen, was that he was talking about a Manchester United team in 1995 that contained the likes of Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Gary and Phil Neville and Nicky Butt. United went on to win the League and Cup double.

Every time I watch Shimizu S-Pulse play, I think about Hansen's comment. Not because Shimizu have players in the calibre of Beckham or Scholes! Nor because they are a giant of Japanese football, in the way that United are giants of the English game. I think about Hansen's comment because Shimizu S-Pulse are a team full of kids. Okay, some of those kids are older than what Beckham and Scholes were in 1995. But when you stay on at University to finish your degree before signing a professional contract, as the likes of Jungo Fujimoto, Akihiro Hyodo and Takuro Yajima have done, you can forgive the players for being slightly older than your average young star.

It was one youngster in particular, Jungo Fujimoto, who single handedly destroyed Kawasaki Frontale in midweek. Kawasaki could hardly claim to be unaware of Fujimoto's skills - on the previous Saturday against Yokohama F. Marinos, Fujimoto opened proceedings with a scorching twenty-five yard drive, before curling a delightful free-kick over the wall to score a late winner! Yet Kawasaki were equally unable to deal with the combination of power and finesse shown by the slightly built Fujimoto. Once again he opened the scoring in this match, shrugging off two Frontale defenders on a surging run through midfield, before unleashing a powerful drive that flashed by Shinya Yoshihara in the Kawasaki goal.

Kengo Nakamura is another young Japanese midfielder in fine form and he scored a similar goal to Fujimoto's opener, breaking clear wide on the right, before launching an eighteen yard rocket high into the top of Yohei Nishibe's net. Many fans have high hopes for Nakamura and his burgeoning international career, and his performance yesterday showed that he is not out of place in the Japan jersey. He constantly tormented the Shimizu defence with his mazy, dribbling runs and the player who learned his trade with a Kawasaki team that once languished in the Second Division, has been integral in the club's drive towards a maiden J-League title.

This was the Fujimoto show, however, and the diminutive midfielder scored his second immediately after the break. Reacting fastest when the ball broke in open play, Fujimoto chipped a delicate lob over the retreating Yoshihara to send the partisan home crowd into raptures. They were silenced less than sixty seconds later, when tall midfielder Hiroyuki Taniguchi crashed a thumping header home to level the scores for a second time.

Conspiracy theorists have always had plenty to write about where the J-League is concerned. The controversy that no J-League match seems complete without, erupted when Hideki Sahara was adjuged to have hauled down Shimizu's tall South Korean striker Cho Jae Jin in the box. The Kawasaki players were incensed and it took nearly two minutes for the commotion to die down, as Jae Jin milled around the penalty spot. When the most visibly nervous person in the stadium steps up to take the penalty, it's generally a good tip to put your money on the goalkeeper. Sure enough, Yoshihara saved Jae Jin's poor spot kick. The lanky South Korean wasn't licked yet though, and as the ball looped high into the air, Jae Jin charged forward to head the rebound into an empty net.

That there was still almost forty minutes of this breathless encounter left said much about the quality of this match. Shimizu's Takuma Edamura has received his fair share of accolades this season, and deservedly so. The midfield dynamo celebrated his twentieth birthday during the win over Yokohama and Edamura, who has scored eight goals in the J-League this season, drove his team forward at every opportunity. It's a shame that the excellent Akihiro Hyodo wasn't beside him in midfield. Hyodo was a key player for Shimizu during the first half of the season, but at just twenty-four, he has been diagnosed with a serious heart condition that may force his early retirement from the game.

You couldn't keep Jungo Fujimoto out of this game, though. With just over ten minutes remaining, Fujimoto completed his hat-trick by skipping passed a couple of defenders on the edge of the area and crashing another low drive inside Yoshihara's near post. The Kawasaki defenders howled at their hapless goalkeeper, who had hardly himself in glory during this match. That meant little to the vociferous home crowd, who gave Fujimoto a thunderous standing ovation in recognition of his outstanding performance.

Taniguchi still had time to score a virtual replay of his first goal, thumping another header home with just over a minute remaining. It wasn't enough to keep Kawasaki's title hopes alive. The final whistle heralded surreal scenes inside Nihondaira Stadium, as the home fans celebratedly wildly while the disconsolate Kawasaki players - some of them wiping away tears, trudged dejectedly from the field.

Shimizu S-Pulse can't win the J-League this season. But they won this match. They might win the Emperor's Cup too, after finishing as runners-up to champions elect Urawa Reds last year. And they've done it with outstanding kids in their team. Aoyama, Edamura, Fujimoto, Yajima and the sorely missed Hyodo are all under twenty-five. They have all been key players for S-Pulse this season, despite none of them having played more than one full season in the J-League so far. Club officials will be hoping that these young players can inspire the team to more victories - starting, preferably, with a win in the Shizuoka derby over bitter rivals Jubilo Iwata on Sunday.