The third East Asian Cup has kicked off in the Chinese city of Chongqing, no doubt provoking a flurry of questions from the Japanese national team like "what are we doing here?" and "when can we go home?"

This time around the competition is being contested by hosts China, Korea Republic (South Korea), Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Japan. Whilst North Korea might be the last remaining Stalinist state on earth, anyone with a cursory knowledge of East Asian history will know that Japan are the black sheep of that particular group.

History has been the fuel that has fired many a great football rivalry. During his time as England coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson's obvious under-estimation of the rivalry between England and Australia led to an ill-fated friendly at Upton Park that saw Australia thump their English counterparts in a result that almost cost Eriksson his job. More obvious is the rivalry between countries that have been the victims of various wrong-doings over the years - the Netherlands vs Germany remains one of the world game's most hostile international rivalries for a reason.

Spare a thought then for the young men that make up the Japanese national team, and who are thrown like lambs to the slaughter every few years in front of East Asian audiences that are baying for their blood. It's certainly true that of all countries, Japan has been one of the most reticent in acknowledging their role in the bloody conflict that was World War Two. But what that has to do with a group of young footballers representing their country in an international competition, I'm really not sure.

When the spotlight is on him, or when there is political favour to curry, FIFA President Joseph 'Sepp' Blatter is quick to denounce the booing and general disrespect of national anthems during international fixtures. Yet his silence in regard to East Asian relations is deafening. Japan's victory in the 2004 Asian Cup Final in Beijing prompted riots in the Chinese capital. Urawa Reds' only interest in last year's A3 Champions Cup in China was in getting out of the tournament with all of their limbs in tact. The atrocious refereeing, the scuffling between fans, the general increase in hostility between nations taking part in these international competitions leads me to ask the question, "what's the point?"

I clash regularly with Australian fans who wish to claim to anyone within earshot that Australia joining the Asian Football Confederation is the best thing to happen since sliced bread. Certainly the standard of football in Australia will improve. But when I hear Australian fans suggesting that Australia "must" send a team to competitions like the East Asian Cup - as if they'll find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I can only shake my head and laugh. The East Asian Cup seems to serve no other purpose than for some countries to take out their historical grievances with other countries on the football pitch. No one cares about the football. It's all about the history. Yet history, it seems, sometimes teaches us nothing all.

After gearing up for their World Cup qualification campaign last month with an uninspiring 0-0 draw with Chile and a slightly improved performance in the 3-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina four days later, Japan set their sights on the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa when they take on Thailand in their opening qualifier at Saitama Stadium on Wednesday.

Coach Takeshi Okada - who is currently in his second spell in charge of the Blue Samurai, has set his sights ambitiously high, claiming that "(i)n 2002, South Korea came in fourth. This team can do better."

The former championship winning coach with Yokohama F. Marinos surely has more immediate concerns. He's been in charge for just under three months, after a severe stroke forced former coach Ivica Osim out of the job. Bereft of the time to make sweeping changes, Okada has retained most of the players from a squad that crashed out of the 2007 Asian Cup at the semi-final stage.

A quick check of a group that also contains Thailand, Oman and Bahrain suggests that Japan should finish in the top two and progress to the next qualification round. Yet things might not be so simple. Thailand were impressive at the 2007 Asian Cup, holding eventual champions Iraq to a 1-1 draw, beating World Cup opponents Oman 2-0 and conceding three goals in the final ten minutes as they ultimately succumbed 4-0 to Australia.

At least the icy weather currently gripping the Kanto region will make things difficult for Thailand, who might struggle to come to terms with a slippery surface and a hostile atmosphere at Saitama Stadium. Yet with Japan currently struggling up front, the clash with Thailand could be decided by a solitary strike.

The Thailand encounter will likely set the tone for the rest of Japan's qualification campaign. One or two players would do well to take any opportunities that come their way by the scruff of the neck - Vissel Kobe's Yoshito Okubo and Yokohama F. Marinos star Koji Yamase were both criminally overlooked by Ivica Osim, whilst the likes of Yosuke Kashiwagi, Yuzo Tashiro and more obviously Atsuto Uchida may also get their chance. Japan will want to start on the front foot though, with difficult looking trips to Al Manamah, Muscat and Bangkok on the horizon.

Japan's 2010 World Cup qualification campaign is as follows;

February 2: Japan vs Thailand (Saitama Stadium)

March 26 : Bahrain vs Japan

June 2 : Japan vs Oman (Yokohama International Stadium)

June 7 : Oman vs Japan

June 14: Thailand vs Japan

June 22 : Japan vs Thailand (Saitama Stadium) 

Japan beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 3-0 in freezing conditions at the National Stadium in Tokyo last night, thanks in no small part to two goals from substitute Koji Yamase.

After a season of starring for the otherwise mediocre Yokohama F. Marinos, the tricky Yamase finally got his chance when JEF United striker Seiichiro Maki went off injured. Yamase scored twice, finishing both goals with aplomb - which begs the question of why he was never given a chance under former coach Ivica Osim.

Speaking of Osim, the former Yugoslavia coach watched the match from the National Stadium, just months after suffering what appeared to be a life-threatening stroke. While Osim undoubtedly made strides with the national team, he'll no doubt have noted that many of the players most effective against Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely Atsuto Uchida, Yoshito Okubo and Yamase, were players who were overlooked under Osim's reign - generally for players Osim knew from his days as coach of JEF United.

Japan face Thailand in their opening World Cup qualifier on February 6, and on the basis of their 2007 showing at the Asian Cup, the Thai's will be no pushover. With the JEF United side that lifted the 2005 and 2006 League Cup having disintegrated this January, and with Ivica Osim no longer in charge of the national team, many fans in Japan are hoping that 2008 spells change for the Blue Samurai, particularly in terms of playing personnel.

Having visited the incredible Toyota Stadium during the recent FIFA Club World Cup, I began to consider some of the best stadiums I've ever seen games in.

I've been fortunate enough to watch football in many different stadiums. At the 2006 FIFA World Cup I attended games at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion in Kaiserslautern, the Allianz Arena in München and the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion in Stuttgart.

At the FIFA Club World Cup, we saw games at the National Stadium in Tokyo, the futuristic Toyota Stadium and of course Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. I've seen games in more ramshackle grounds too - my favourite being the Südstadion in Köln, where I once saw Fortuna Köln striker Seyedali Mousavi hit a passing train with a hopelessly inaccurate penalty against VfL Bochum.

These days I watch the majority of my football at Shimizu S-Pulse's atmospheric Nihondaira Stadium.

Set amongst the Nihondaira hills with a spectacular view of Mount Fuji and the port city of Shimizu below, it's hard to imagine a more picturesque venue for a football stadium.

The ground itself isn't too bad either, with four distinct stands rising up over the landscape. The so-called 'Back Stand' features a roof that stretches only three-quarters of the way across the stand. Like many I had been duped into believing it was so that the view of Mount Fuji was not obscured, but wikipedia's Shizuoka Sensei (whose photo I have lovingly republished here) assures us that the reason for the missing section is because there is not enough room behind the stand to lay the necessary foundations to support the roof!

Before moving to Shimizu, my venue of choice was the Sydney Football Stadium, home of A-League misfits Sydney FC.

The stadium would have to be the subject of one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever stumbled across; that being whether Sydney FC should play out of a ground located in the city centre, or whether they should move to a stadium in the suburbs, closer to the geographical centre of Sydney - one of the world's most sprawling cities.

Personally I think it's ludicrous to suggest that Sydney FC should play anywhere but in the heart of the city itself, but when Sydney FC fans are not donning their town planning hats, they're often maligning the stadium's frustrating roof. Heralded as an architectural masterpiece, the roof over the Sydney Football Stadium is everything that modern architecture should never be - nice to look at and completely useless. The roof is supposed to represent a wave, or something, and meanders up and down over the stands in an eye-catching manner. Unfortunately it also covers about 10% of the stands below, allowing the majority of the crowd to leave A-League games wet, since a Sydney FC home fixture is synonymous with wet weather in the Harbour city.

Before the advent of the A-League, the ground I frequented most often was Borussia Dortmund's legendary Westfalenstadion.

There are hardly enough superlatives to describe what is rightly considered one of the world's truly great football grounds. Dortmund's Südtribüne (pictured) - where I used to stand in Block 12, is Europe's largest standing terrace, and is packed with more than 25,000 of Dortmund's most vocal supporters on Bundesliga matchdays. When I used to attend games in 2000, the capacity of the Westfalenstadion was 63,000. That was increased to 80,000 (or 65,000 as an all-seater) as Dortmund hosted a semi-final at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and these days Borussia Dortmund enjoy the highest average attendance of any club in Europe.

The stadium was originally built as a 40,000 capacity venue for the 1974 FIFA World Cup. With the capacity having doubled since those days, some Dortmund fans now complain that the atmosphere at the ground has been diluted, with half the fans in attendance simply there to enjoy the spectacle of one Europe's biggest crowds. Still, it's hard to look passed the Westfalen as a venerable temple of football, and it's generally regarded as one of the most intimidating venue in the Bundesliga, at least when frustrated Dortmund fans aren't jeering their own team.

These days stadiums built in the 20th Century seem to have passed their use-by-date. They are increasingly being replaced by stock-standard stadia built on the outskirts of town, far from commercial and residential areas, and the potential for social interaction that these areas encompass. It seems the days of enjoying a pint or two in pubs that line the route to the ground are numbered.

The question of what makes a great stadium is also subjective. Some talk about capacity, others prefer location, while others still mention the atmosphere created inside the ground. For me a great stadium entails all of those things. But I'm interested to hear what you think. Which do you consider to be the best stadium in world football?

Nihondaira Stadium

Sydney Football Stadium

Westfalenstadion

The 2007 Emperor's Cup has been whittled down to just four, following the completion of the quarter-finals last weekend.

The last eight kicked-off with Gamba Osaka beating Shimizu S-Pulse 1-0 in extra-time at Nagai Stadium in Osaka, thanks to substitute Shinichi Terada's 92nd minute strike. The win ends Shimizu's hopes of playing a semi-final on home territory (of sorts), with the semi-final on their side of the draw scheduled to take place at Ecopa Stadium in Fukuroi - some seventy kilometres from the town of Shimizu.

Saturday's second quarter-final saw Japan Football League side Honda FC take on Kashima Antlers at Yurtec Stadium in Sendai. Non-leaguers Honda took newly crowned J-League champions Kashima to extra-time, before finally succumbing to veteran Atsushi Yanagisawa - who is reportedly on the move to newly promoted Kyoto Sanga FC, and who scored a 110th minute winner to keep Kashima's hopes of a League and Cup double alive.

In keeping with the Japan Football Association's infuriating policy of scheduling Emperor's Cup fixtures in baffling venues, the third quarter-final was long set down to take place at Saitama Stadium. Clearly the JFA and its Urawa-loving President Saburo Kawabuchi were banking on the Reds reaching the quarter-final stage. No one told Ehime FC, however, and the J2 side unceremoniously dumped defending champions Urawa out of the competition back in Round 4.

After beating Yokohama FC in the last round, Ehime FC's run finally came to an end at the hands of Kawasaki Frontale, who won 2-0 but who could probably have wracked up a cricket score if they had actually been trying. These two sides last met in J2 back in 2004, but these days Ehime and Kawasaki are world's apart, with Kengo Nakamura, Juninho and co. having transformed Kawasaki into one of the hottest teams in Japanese football.

The final quarter-final saw two of Japan's most dismal performers go head-to-head in a clash that was surely marketed as "The Match-Up Of The Mediocre!" FC Tokyo will proudly go home in the knowledge that they are perhaps the only team this season to make Sanfrecce Hiroshima look good, as Hiroshima came away from Kumamoto Stadium with a 2-0 win thanks to goals form Yosuke Kashiwagi and Yuichi Komano, both of whom are rumoured to be heading for the exit door at newly relegated Hiroshima.

Gamba Osaka will thus meet Sanfrecce Hiroshima at Ecopa Stadium, while Kawasaki take on Kashima in what appears to be a far more appealing contest at the National Stadium in Tokyo, with both ties taking place on December 29. Three days later the National Stadium will be rocking for the Final, as the long Japanese season draws to a close with the traditional New Year's day Emperor's Cup final.

How on earth were Sanfrecce Hiroshima relegated? How did a team that contains two current Japan internationals, three current Japan under-22 internationals, a host of former Japan internationals, former Korean and Bulgarian internationals and the highest scoring foreign player in J-League history... end up in J2?

Big teams have been relegated in the J-League before. In 2006 Cerezo Osaka went from losing out on the J-League title in stoppage time the previous season, to the indignation of relegation just twelve months later. Tokyo Verdy went down the season before. But in both cases Cerezo and Verdy struggled throughout the entire season. Yet Sanfrecce Hiroshima never really looked in danger of going down in 2007, until the penultimate round of the season.

It was only at the end of Round 33 that it became obvious Sanfrecce Hiroshima would have to fight their way out of trouble in a promotion/relegation playoff. That's because Leandro's wonder-goal in stoppage time at Ajinomoto Stadium propelled Omiya Ardija to a 2-1 win over FC Tokyo and subsequent safety. At the same time Hiroshima were thumped 3-0 by Kawasaki Frontale at Todoroki Stadium, practically condemning them to the playoff against the third-placed finisher in J2.

Even so, few expected Hiroshima to have too many problems in seeing off a Kyoto Sanga FC side that had finished dead last in the First Division a season earlier. Kyoto had mustered a late season surge to finish in third place in J2, and their good form continued in a 2-1 win over Hiroshima at Nishikyogoku Stadium in the first leg of the playoff. Despite copping an absolute battering at Big Arch Stadium, Kyoto somehow hung on to record a 0-0 draw, with Sanfrecce substitute Ryuichi Hirashige incredibly hitting the post with a bicycle kick in stoppage time that would have kept Hiroshima in the top flight!

Predictably, most have pointed the finger at Hiroshima's Austrian coach Mihailo Petrovic for the team's failure. Yet perhaps Hiroshima have also learned the value of vocal supporters. While JEF United struggled throughout 2007, they always looked capable of retaining their top flight status when playing in front of their vociferous fans at the Fukuda Denshi Arena. Hiroshima, meanwhile, played out of the eternally-maligned Big Arch Stadium - a concrete colosseum on the outskirts of town that holds over 50,000, but which often struggles to attack even five figure crowds in J1.

Hiroshima will have no such worries next season. They'll be plying their trade against the likes of Tokushima Vortis and Mito Hollyhock - hardly giants of world football, no disrespect intended. Star striker Hisato Sato has already declared his intentions to try and fire Hiroshima to their second promotion in five years, after the Mazda-backed club were also relegated at the end of the 2003 season. Whether new Japan coach Takeshi Okada looks favourably on Sato's decision remains to be seen - Sato was overlooked for Okada's first 33-man training squad.

Hiroshima have been in this position before. But like Tokyo Verdy and Cerezo Osaka before them, they might find promotion from J2 as difficult a prospect as maintaining their place in the top flight.

So the League Cup finalists in Japan have been decided for another year, and the fact that Gamba Osaka have booked their place at Kokuritsu means that the Final is unlikely to sell out in a matter of hours, as it did last season - if it even sells out at all.

Gamba can thank a contentious penalty decision for their progression (and how often can you thank a dodgy call for a victory in Japan? Answer: just about every week), after they beat Kashima 1-0 in the first leg of their semi-final last Wednesday night.

Kashima fought back to win the second leg 3-2 at Kashima Stadium, but Gamba advanced on the away goals rule, depriving the Final of the colourful sight of thousands of Kashima fans filling one end of the National Stadium in Tokyo.

The Nabisco League Cup, as it's officially known, is sponsored by a company that makes biscuits and chips and similar sorts of savoury food items. I must say their heavily-salted chips are no match for the Potelkas that I munch on an ill-health inducing basis, and the League Cup Final also has a somewhat bland, almost stale look to it, with Kawasaki Frontale the team to take on Gamba in the championship game.

At least the Kanagawa club are in close enough proximity to bring thousands of fans to the National Stadium, although one can't help but think Kawasaki's local rivals Yokohama F. Marinos would have brought more.

At any rate Kawasaki beat Yokohama in both legs of their semi-finals, winning 2-1 at Nissan Stadium before making the ten kilometre trip back to Kawasaki to win 4-2 at  their Todoroki home and thus record a convincing 6-3 aggregate win.

A League Cup crown would go some way to vanquishing the disappointment of Kawasaki's AFC Champions League quarter-final exit at the hands of Iranian side Sepahan. It won't mask the fact that Kawasaki dropped out of the J-League title race to try and win the AFC Champions League, nor will it hide the fact that without Juninho up front, Kawasaki probably wouldn't have won half the games that they have this season.

Nevertheless Gamba Osaka have also seemingly spent the past few months busily conjuring up new ways to choke in the J-League title race. Their "star" Brazilian striker Magno Alves is injured, and the Panasonic-backed team will hope that the elusive front man has recovered in time to take to their field on November 3.

They'll need all the help they can get, because if last season's Emperor's Cup Final is anything to go by, then Gamba are perhaps one of the few teams in Japan who can't rely on a fervent support to potentially get them over the line. It must be said that on New Year's Day Gamba's spindly support was being stared down by a roaring, vociferous army of Urawa fans, but what few dedicated Gamba fans there were (when they weren't being disrupted by interlopers like myself)... they were no match for the cacaphony of noise made by Urawa's exictable fans.

Last year's League Cup Final was a cracker (do I get paid for puns like this, Nabisco?) as JEF United and Kashima Antlers went head-to-head in a clash between two teams for whom a trophy would literally make or break their season. It'll be a similar scenario for Gamba Osaka and Kawasaki Frontale, when these two out-of-sorts teams clash at the National Stadium in Tokyo on November 3.

Last Sunday's J-League clash between FC Tokyo and Shimizu S-Pulse revealed that, if nothing else, the J-League landscape is a diverse one.

For those experiencing a J-League match for the first time, the sound of "DJ Stephen" breathlessly announcing the team line-up's in slow, calculated English may have left newcomers feeling slightly confused.

For Shimizu fans, the match was no doubt celebrated as a chance to knock off a team from the big smoke and avenge the 3-1 drubbing that Tokyo handed out to Shimizu at Nihondaira Stadium earlier in the season.

Tokyo fans will have rejoiced as a crowd of over 30,000 piled into Ajinomoto Stadium on grey autumn afternoon, yet the casual observer may have noted the sight of around 20,000 empty seats staring back at them.

Certainly one of the matches of the round produced a carnival atmosphere, with former Tokyo legend Amaral presented to the capital city faithful before the match. His presence seemed to fire up the hosts, who ended Shimizu's six match winning streak with a 2-0 win, courtesy of an own goal from S-Pulse captain Kazumichi Takagi and a volley seconds later from Tokyo striker Shingo Akamine.

What may have stuck in the mind of Shimizu fans, however, is just how different the experience of watching their team play in front of hosts FC Tokyo was, compared to their usual J-League fare.

The cavernous Ajinomoto Stadium was built with the 2002 FIFA World Cup in mind. Sadly for the city of Tokyo, it was finished before FIFA decided that the tournament should be co-hosted by Korea Republic and Japan. With nearby Saitama Stadium hosting a semi-final and neighbouring Nissan Stadium in Yokohama selected as the venue for the World Cup final, Tokyo was axed as a World Cup city - leaving FC Tokyo to try and find ways of filling a 50,000 capacity ground.

Conventional wisdom suggests that actually winning a few games on the pitch would help, but never a team to back away from some on-field mediocrity, FC Tokyo have come up with some other novel ways of attracting fans. Noted for their so-called "English style" of support, earlier this season FC Tokyo promoted an "English Day" - blasting out Britpop tunes and offering traditional British match-day food at their clash with JEF United. They even rounded up as many English-speaking volunteers as they could find, to guide confused gaijin to their seats after offering free entry to British fans (tough luck for this correspondent!).

All of this stands in glaring contrast to Shimizu S-Pulse - a community club that relies on the support of local fans both to fill Nihondaira Stadium and to keep the team afloat. With the "S-Pulse Club Shop" located on "S-Pulse Street" opposite the "S-Pulse Dream Plaza" shopping centre, the locals here are proud that their football team is one of the focal points of the community.

Shimizu, unlike FC Tokyo - are not fighting in a market that also contains fellow J-League club Tokyo Verdy, as well as two popular baseball teams and the myriad other attractions that a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo offers. As such, it's not surprising to see Tokyo reaching out to new markets - in this case English speakers, although one can't help but think that if Shimizu S-Pulse were also willing to think outside the square, they too might attract new fans who, if nothing else, were willing to pump some money into the club.

Repeated requests on my part for Shimizu to produce an English-language version of their website finally yielded a stock-standard Babelfish translation (http://www.s-pulse.co.jp/english/) that overlooks all of the most crucial details - where to buy tickets, how to access the ground and what the fixture list looks like. Contrast this with local rivals Jubilo Iwata (http://www.jubilo-iwata.co.jp/eng/index.php) and one gets the feeling that Shimizu are happier to turn a blind eye to the sprinkling of English-speakers and Brazilians that dot Nihondaira Stadium on a weekly basis.

Yet, grumblings aside, perhaps what makes the J-League such an intriguing competition is its diversity. The J-League could never be accused of being homogeneous, with most away trips likely to be rewarded with an experience unlike any other. Thus while the warblings of "DJ Stephen" might be a novel treat in the capital (except, perhaps, for non-English speaking FC Tokyo fans!), it would be a shame if this experience was recreated throughout the land.

And while FC Tokyo officials might like to see a couple more of those 20,000 empty seats filled - and they would be if Tokyo Verdy got their act together and achieved promotion from J2, they only need to look outside to see what it might be like to be on the periphery in this country - which is where fans of "American Football" seem to be.

Japan is traditionally a baseball country, and the baseball season really starts to heat up by the time the summer rolls around.

It's not the only thing that heats up, and in a country that insulation puzzlingly bypassed, people everywhere are looking to flee their apartments and small houses to try and beat the heat.

It used to be that baseball stadiums across the country were packed on these balmy summer evenings, but these days the bleechers sometimes seem less crowded than usual.

Perhaps that has something to do with the advent of the J-League, and attendances in football stadiums across the country this week may bear that out.

Nearly 54,000 fans descended upon Nissan Stadium in Yokohama last weekend, although Yokohama FC fans must have been considering hara-kiri by the end of it, as their team was astonishingly crushed 8-1 by Yokohama F. Marinos. Talk about revenge! Yokohama F. Marinos had slumped to an humiliating 1-0 defeat to their cross-town rivals earlier in the season - Yokohama FC's first ever win in the top flight, but F. Marinos wreaked their vengeance at Nissan Stadium and then some. Hideo Oshima scored four, Koji Yamase scored twice and if they let a stray dog on the pitch he would have scored too, as Yokohama FC capitulated in a strangely compelling fashion... for everyone but Yokohama FC fans.

47,359 fans packed into Saitama Stadium to see Urawa draw 1-1 with Kashiwa Reysol, a result that Gamba Osaka took advantage of by beating third placed outfit Albirex Niigata 3-1 in front of 18,112 fans at 'Banpaku.'

The attendance patterns were repeated across the country - 16,070 fans turned out at Fukuda Denshi Arena to jeer JEF United on to yet another embarrassing loss, 15,047 fans rocked up to Nihondaira Stadium to see if new Omiya coach Satoru Sakuma would spontaneously combust on the touchline - he didn't, and Omiya held their hosts to a 2-2 draw (much to this correspondent's annoyance), 14,316 fans managed to find their way to Kose Sports Park Stadium (they must have been locals) and even Sanfrecce Hiroshima managed to draw a crowd of 12,595 fans at their decrepit Big Arch Stadium - only another 40,000 or so to go 'til you get a full house guys!

The O-Bon holidays here in Japan are intended as a time for people to return to their home towns to rediscover their familial roots, although as far as I can tell most people just use it as a time to go a midweek sporting contest.

That meant bumper crowds for the midweek round of fixtures as well, as 19,600 fans turned out at Kashima Stadium to witness Kashima hand to JEF United their dignity on a plate in a 3-1 win, while 42,015 fans saw the 'full house' sign go up at Big Swan Stadium, as Albirex Niigata thrashed Nagoya Grampus Eight 4-0. 14,854 fans demonstrated what a decent atmosphere can be conjured at Yamaha Stadium if the locals actually bothered to get behind their team, as Jubilo Iwata thumped FC Tokyo 5-2, while the Kanagawa Derby attracted a crowd of 18,095 as Yokohama F. Marinos did the double over Kawasaki Frontale this year.

The big clash, of course, was at Expo '70 Stadium in Osaka, where some of the locked-out locals were doing the old Leichhardt Stadium trick and climbing trees outside the ground to try and get a vantage point as Gamba Osaka and Urawa went head-to-head in front of 20,912 fans.

Fortunately the fact that most of the English-language press seem to be on holidays (or suffering from heat-stroke) spared us from too many "battle of the giants!" headlines in the papers, as Urawa ultimately prevailed 1-0 thanks to Yuichiro Nagai's lone strike. Ryuji Bando had a goal ruled out for offside in the first half - who'd have guessed! - as Urawa coincidentally hauled themselves back into the title race, just as Gamba had looked likely to run away with the league and make the rest of the season fairly boring for everyone but JEF United fans.

I've been lucky enough to see some of the biggest punk bands on the planet.

I've seen Agnostic Front tear up Klub Eskulap in western Poland. I've run a gauntlet between protesting Christian fundamentalists and Marilyn Manson fans lining up to buy tickets, on my way to see legendary Los Angeles act Bad Religion in Düsseldorf. I've witnessed an on-stage marriage proposal - and acceptance - at a Sick Of It All show, and had the same band dedicate Injustice System to me in front of more than 15,000 fans at an outdoor festival in Germany.

I've watched bands like Raised Fist and Ensign play in front of twenty-five people and invest more energy into their sets than some people do their entire lives. I've heard the strain of emotion in Zoli's voice when Ignite played Poverty For All in Prague, and I've seen hundreds of fans burst into the Yokohama Cultural Centre as the opening riff of Everready boomed out from New York's prodigal sons H2O. I've seen just about every recent Australian punk band you care to name.

The memories of these shows, acquired over years of blurry nights at sweaty clubs packed with angry kids, share a common theme. Passion. That's something that I don't see a lot of on the football pitch these days.

What I see a lot of are players who talk the talk. You know the type. They sign for a club. They kiss the badge every time they score. They engineer some kind of falling out with the manager, sign for their former club's biggest rivals, kiss a new badge and tell all and sundry that it has always been their dream to "play for this club." And then two years later they do it all again. It's an insult to the fans.

Fans seem to be the forgotten factor in some leagues. Back in 2000 I called the ticket office of Southampton FC and had a conversation that went like this...

Us: "Hello, can you please tell me what your cheapest ticket costs for the match against Liverpool?"

Them: "28 pounds."

Us: "28 pounds? Do you have anything cheaper?"

Them: "That's how much it costs to watch top quality football."

Us: "But I pay about five pounds to watch Borussia Dortmund - and they won the European Cup three years ago.

Them: *click*

Welcome to the brave new world of the English Profit League - Where We'll Always Treat You Like A Customer, Hold The Line Please!

If ever a league has misunderstood fan culture, it's the J-League. If ever there was one team synonymous with that misunderstanding, it is the Yokohama Flügels.

The Yokohama Flügels don't exist any more. Ever wondered where the "F" in Yokohama F. Marinos comes from? Now you know. The Flügels were absorbed by the Marinos in 1998 when the bubble burst in Japan and some men in suits calmly informed their respective clubs that they were merging. The merger took place overnight, with no consultation of coaches or players - let alone fans. In Japan, business mergers happened all the time... the respective owners of the Marinos and Flügels saw little difference between those mergers and the merger of two football clubs.

Yet at a time when the mercurial Hidetoshi Nakata was thumbing his nose at the Japanese hierarchy, the merger of the two Yokohama clubs unleashed the wrath of Hades on these bumbling Japanese bureaucrats. Fans from both clubs reacted furiously and set in motion concerted campaigns to have the merger annulled. If there is one thing that Japanese bureaucrats love more than making hare-brained decisions, however, it is steadfastly refusing to back down from those decisions, no matter how inappropriate they seem.

So, fast-forwarding almost a decade, you could forgive Yokohama FC fans for being a tad more passionate than usual about this weekend's clash with cross-town rivals Yokohama F. Marinos. "But who are Yokohama FC?" I hear you yelp. They're a club founded by former Flügels fans, after their own team was taken out from under their feet. Around 40,000 of those fans descended upon Nissan Stadium to watch their rock bottom misfits lose 1-0 to JEF United in the last match before the mid-season break. If the J-League isn't careful, Nissan Stadium could well be rocking to the tune of 70,000 fans this weekend.

Fans, huh. Remember them?

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