Shimizu S-Pulse and Urawa Reds played out a pulsating 2-2 draw in front of 30,851 fans at Ecopa Stadium in Fukuroi yesterday.

In bright sunshine on a glorious Shōwa Day public holiday, it's unlikely that too many of the fans inside Ecopa were reflecting on Japan's period of prosperity under the former Emperor, with football fans concerned by more pressing matters as two of the league's most passionately supported clubs came head-to-head.

The first surprise of the afternoon came with Kenta Hasegawa's ultra-defensive starting eleven, as veterans Teruyoshi Ito and Marcos Paulo Alves were both recalled to start alongside the similarly defensive Masaki Yamamoto, with the S-Pulse game plan apparently to bamboozle Urawa with a series of square balls and back passes.

An even bigger shock was the decision to leave out 4-goal top scorer Shinji Okazaki, as fellow youngster Kazuki Hara started in his stead alongside the recalled Frode Johnsen, with former Urawa striker Yuichiro Nagai dropping back to the bench.

It was the effervescent Hara who was causing all sort of problems for the Urawa defence in the first half, and not surprisingly it was he was who was up-ended in the penalty area some seventeen minutes in. With most S-Pulse fans expecting Frode Johnsen to step up to the spot, it was instead the redoubtable Hara who confidently sent Ryota Tsuzuki the wrong way from the spot.

Despite stringing a defensive wall in front of the back four, S-Pulse were still struggling to contain Urawa's pacy counter-attacks. Not surprisingly it was the Reds who scored next, as Robson Ponte took advantage of Urawa's superior numbers inside the box to level the scores before the break.

With two outstanding teenagers on the pitch in the form of 17-year-old Genki Haraguchi and 18-year-old Naoki Yamada, Urawa possessed plenty of pace and penetration. And didn't the S-Pulse defence feel it, as with sixteen minutes remaining the electrifying Yamada brushed off a series of attempted tackles, before bursting into the penalty area and curling an inch-perfect strike into the far corner of the goal.

Roared on by a partisan and increasingly desperate home crowd, Shimizu S-Pulse surged forward in search of an equaliser. They almost found one when substitute Nagai got his head to a cross, but somehow Ryota Tsuzuki managed to scramble back and claw the ball out before it crossed the goal-line.

Nevertheless with three minutes remaining S-Pulse eventually managed to pull a goal back, and they did so through the unlikeliest of sources, as stand-in captain and full-back Arata Kodama demonstrated his years of experience to place a precise side-footed volley between Tsuzuki and his near post, and send the massed ranks of Shimizu fans behind the goal wild with delirium.

Both teams collapsed to the turf in exhaustion at the final whistle, following a battling display in what was a bruising encounter at times. Respective coaches Kenta Hasegawa and Volker Finke will have plenty of food for thought, however, after an encounter in which both defences were beaten for pace by exciting youngsters, only to see a couple of veterans in the form of Robson Ponte and Arata Kodama chime in with priceless goals of their own.

Shimizu S-Pulse have pulled off a real coup, in my opinion, with the announcement that Kenta Hasegawa's side have lured disgruntled ex-Urawa Reds striker Yuichiro Nagai to Nihondaira Stadium.

Nagai has real pedigree - he came up through the youth ranks at Urawa before playing almost 300 games for the Saitama side, and scored four goals during a season-long loan spell at 2.Bundesliga club Karlsruher SC in the late nineties. 

He's also played four times for his country and was named the Player Of The Tournament in the 2007 AFC Champions League, but after being confined to a bit-part role by now departed coach Gert Engels last season, Nagai has departed in a huff to take up a new challenge in Shimizu. 

Nagai will be welcomed with open arms by a club that has released Brazilian attackers Fernandinho and Marcos Aurelio, while the bullocking Takuro Yajima has signed on with Kawasaki Frontale and veteran Akinori Nishizawa has departed for J2 to link up with his former club Cerezo Osaka.

S-Pulse already possess Japanese youngsters Shinji Okazaki - who recently made his full international debut - and Kazuki Hara up front, while Norwegian veteran Frode Johnsen has also inked a deal in Shimizu, as the club look to return to rediscover the form they displayed during Korean striker Cho Jae-Jin's goal-laden spell at the club.

Nagai could be just the kind of player to propel S-Pulse into the AFC Champions League.

He's vastly experienced, deceptively quick, has a good finish and, perhaps most importantly, Nagai has a point to prove.

Like several other Urawa players he grew increasingly disillusioned with the back-room politics threatening to split the Reds star-studded squad apart. Rather than play second fiddle to Edmilson and Naohiro Takahara - who both endured decidedly mediocre campaigns in 2008 - Nagai will instead look to stamp his authority on Shimizu S-Pulse.

At just 29 he's arguably still got his best football in front of him.

He may have arrived from the hated Reds, but Shimizu S-Pulse fans won't care. Yuichiro Nagai is in the prime of his career. Here's hoping that his link-up with S-Pulse proves a match made in heaven.

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!

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.

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.

Did you know that the average armadillo grows to about 75 centimetres (or 30 inches, for you metric-phobes out there) in length? I just looked it up on Wikipedia. I know it's not football related, but I'd give anything not to re-live the 2007 Emperor's Cup Final.

It should have been a great game! It wasn't. These things happen in football. Urawa beat Gamba Osaka in the 2007 Emperor's Cup Final in fortuitous circumstances. They were lucky to beat Avispa Fukuoka, Jubilo Iwata and to a lesser extent, Kashima Antlers in the rounds preceeding the Final, so it was hardly surprising that luck should favour the Saitama club on the day.

There would have been no need for luck had Ryuji Bando or Magno Alves done what they are paid to do, and that is put the ball in the back of the net. Magno Alves in particular is a fascinating player to watch. On a day when Urawa's own Brazilian striker was enjoying the sunshine on a Brazilian beach (or maybe he wasn't, but that's where I wanted to be come half-time), Alves had the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the skills that saw him share the golden boot with Washington. Instead he demonstrated the skills that lead many J-League fans to believe that he's not in quite the same class as Washington.

Alves spent most of the match pointing and shouting - sometimes aiming withering glares in the direction of his strike partner Bando, often running this way, sometimes running that, but never running in a direction that was going to assist Gamba Osaka in any particular way. In fact, Alves seemed to exert most of his energy in trying to get out of the way of actually doing something useful. When the ball did land at his feet, he seemed startled, and would either pass it straight to a Urawa defender, or otherwise reel off one the hopelessly inaccurate shots that seem to be the forté of his game.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on old Alves. He was probably just cold. I know I was cold. As an Aussie, I use to laugh at the descriptions of "bitter cold" when I listened to the FA Cup Third Round on the World Service as a youngster. That is until I experienced it myself. Once, in a feat of idiocy I am yet to match, I ventured out to the Südstadion to cheer on the hapless Fortuna Köln in the derby against Fortuna Düsseldorf. Fortuna Köln were in such desperate need of support, I concluded, that I decided to make my jersey visible. So I piled layer upon layer of clothing under my jersey and set out for the game. It snowed. I nearly caught hypothermia. Freezing, I went to leave five minutes before the end, but turned on my heel at the gate and stood just long enough to watch Frank Süs score a last minute winner. Bless him for it, because if he hadn't scored that goal then I might never have watched football again.

Now where was I? Ah yes, the Emperor's Cup Final. It was boring. I mean, it had its moments, such as Akira Kaji heading the ball straight at ex-Gamba goalkeeper Ryota Tsuzuki in the Urawa goal. Or Akihiro Ienaga fashioning some half-decent chances that didn't end up with him infuriatingly taking the wrong option at a vital moment, which he seems to have a tendency to do. On the whole though, the entire game was tedious.

It might have been more memorable if it was settled by a cracking pile-driver, two minutes from the end. Instead it was settled by a scrappy counter-attack, when substitute Masayuki Okano burst through what appeared to an optimistic 0-0-10 formation on Gamba's part, to send in a low cross to Yuichiro Nagai - who was deputising for Washington up front. The Brazilian marksman probably would have blasted a hole in the back of the net, but Nagai prefers a more subtle option, so he subtly fired the ball straight at Naoki Matsuyo with all the power of a weak kitten. Matsuyo rather unhelpfully diverted the ball straight into the goal, to send the majority of the 46,880 strong crowd into spasms of wild relief. No one could have put up with another thirty minutes of that in extra-time.

And so, Urawa Reds become the first team to win the double since Kashima Antlers in 2000. The match also marked the end of Guido Buchwald's three years in charge at the club. He returns to Germany having successfully retained the Emperor's Cup that Urawa won for the first time last season, not to mention having guided the club to their first ever J-League crown. Midfielder Alessandro Santos has also left Urawa to sign with Salzburg in Austria, where he will be joined by Gamba Osaka's popular defender Tsuneyasu Miyamoto. Miyamoto was no doubt distraught at not having ended his Gamba career by lifting the Emperor's Cup for the first time in the club's history. This is a match that Miyamoto will no doubt not look back on with fond memories. But hey, at least he didn't have to watch it!

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.

To borrow a phrase from legendary Australian cricket commentator Bill Lawry, "it's all happening in the J-League!" For the third season in a row, the J-League will go down to the wire after Urawa Reds failed to wrap up the title when they drew 0-0 with FC Tokyo at the weekend. Elsewhere Gamba Osaka scored a dramatic last minute winner against Kyoto, that did more than just consign Kyoto to the Second Division next season. This was the tenth match since Tokyo lost 1-0 to Kyoto on September 16 and since that time, the club from the capital had scored eighteen goals. Including Urawa's 2-1 win over Sanfrecce Hiroshima on September 16, Urawa had scored twenty goals before their match against FC Tokyo at Ajinomoto Stadium. Given that Urawa's Brazilian striker Washington looks capable of scoring every time he touches the ball, while Tokyo's Brazilian Lucas Severino has weighed in with seventeen goals of his own this year, a 0-0 draw seemed the unlikeliest of results.

Gamba's 3-2 win over bottom club Kyoto Purple Sanga was more expected, especially in light of what one might term some 'generous defending' from the Kyoto defence late in the match. Magno Alves' hat-trick also saw him leap to the top of the Brazilian league - sorry, J-League goalscoring charts. He now has 25 league goals - one more than Washington, while another Brazilian, Juninho, has nineteen. And if you think your intrepid reporter was around to catch any of the goals, the glory, the coincidences or conspiracy theories that either of these two drama-charged matches produced, you're wrong!

That's because I was at a draughty Ecopa Stadium, to watch Jubilo Iwata beat Shimizu S-Pulse 1-0 in a dull Shizuoka derby. According to Jonathon Birchell's classic book on Shimizu's tumultuous 1999 season, "Ultra Nippon: How Japan Reinvented Football," these two are the most bitter of rivals. You could have fooled this reporter, as the two clubs eked out one of the most passionless derbies I've ever witnessed. Ryoichi Maeda was the hero for Jubilo, converting a penalty on the hour mark to at least send half of the 37,711 crowd wild. The thousands of orange-clad Shimizu fans massed behind the southern goal didn't seem too perturbed though, out-singing the strangely lifeless Jubilo fans for the entire match. Their team out-played Jubilo for the entire match too, but only went close when Jungo Fujimoto hit the crossbar with a chip that had Japan captain Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi well beaten in the Jubilo goal.

So the club from eight kilometres down the road take the points from the club 70 kilometres up the road, in a stadium that both teams sporadically share. That's all par for the course in the weird world of the J-League, where the talking point next week will invariably be Urawa's sold out title decider against Gamba Osaka. Over 63,000 lucky ticket fans will be at the game, while millions more will tune in to the match live on TV. Not me though, I'll be taking my seat at Nihondaira Stadium, to watch Shimizu S-Pulse take on Sanfrecce Hiroshima in a match that possibly only me and the old ladies from the hairdressing salon will care about.