Of course, there was no real need for me to be in the "Mixed Zone", the area where the players meet the press after the match. I speak no Portuguese at all beyond "obrigado", and my Spanish probably prevents me from doing a great deal more than asking Victor Valdes for a two beers and a ham sandwich, por favor. The journalists are split into three areas, TV, photographers, and journalists, and I stood with the journalists, wracked with a fear that one of them would come up to me, expecting me to ask them a question. "So, then Xavi - do you know the way to the railway station?".

The clear difference was in the demeanour of the players. I may not be able to speak any Portuguese, but when Mauricio, our Brazilian, asked their striker Fernandao a question, I don't think any of us were prepared for the length of his answer. As the surrounding hacks started to drift away (and this accelerated upon the emergence of the goal-scorer, Adriano - the majority of people were nudged in his direction by Perdigao standing behind him, shouting, "talk to him! he scored the goal!"), I started to get the fear that I would be left on my own with him, smiling idiotically and shrugging my shoulders. The Barca players were altogether more curt. Eider Gudjohnsen responded to a question about the Champions League draw by saying that he had other things on his mind right now, and Deco, who was apparently seen out boozing and smoking on Friday night, apparently got a bit short with one hack, even though he won a giant key and a Toyota Prius for his goal against Club America.

By contrast, the Internacionale president positively waltzed through the zone, possibly having drunk the lion's share of a couple of bottles of champagne, with a smile the width of the Rio Grande and the trophy in his hands, singing the Inter club song. Given the looks on the faces of Valdes, Gudjohnsen and Deco, I didn't much fancy the idea of hanging round for Ronaldinho. He might start blubbering or something, and that would be unbearable. For some reason, I think he might get very dribbly when he cries.

Right ho, then. Another truncated version of the "FIFA Anthem", and we're ready to go (and might I briefly register my surprise at the number of hacks that actually stood for it - it represents "all 207 member nations of the FIFA family"), apparently.

7.20: And we're off. Barca must have the toss, because they're in red and blue, and Inter are in their change kit of all white for the second match in a row. The Barca fans here are actually making a bit of noise tonight. It feels like a proper football match.

7.25: A quick after-thought. If any of you have any duck puns you can donate to me, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'm running a bit low here. Also, in an act of daring that, so far as I can see, borders on reckless, Inter are playing three up front.

7.30: If you could permit me a small indulgence here... if there's one thing that annoys me, it's players that walk back from an offside position. Inter were attacking quite nicely there, and themselves into a decent attacking position, but the move broke down because three of their players were offside. Meanwhile, the first corner of the match goes to the Brazilians, who look much sharper than they did during the week. Pato heads well over. he gets top, ahem, "billing" for Internacional this evening.

7.35: Beautiful piece of running from Wellington Monteiro there, carrying the ball forward thirty yards before hopelessly misplacing his pass. You wouldn't have got Tony Adams trying that, you know.

7.39: First real chance of the match for Barcelona. Deco's shot from the edge of the area is parried by Clemer, and Ronaldinho puts the follow-up into the side-netting. In the minute or so after this, Gudjohnsen and Ronaldinho both have penalty claims turned down. Both of them fall into the "I've seen them given for less" category.

7.42: Good chance for Barcelona. Deco gets a bit of space on the right and crosses for Gudjohnsen, but his downward header drops just wide.

7.45: A little bit of pinball in the Internacional penalty area, and the ball falls to Gudjohnsen, who cracks the ball a couple of feet over. Barca are in charge at the moment, but Inter are largely matching them.

7.48: Sudden silence from the crowd, accompanied by a lot of camera flashes as Ronaldinho takes a free-kick from the right hand side of the penalty area, but it's straight down Clemer's throat (not literally, of course - the only person on the pitch who could fit a whole football in his mouth is obviously Ronaldinho).

7.51: Two infuriating moments from Inter inside ten seconds. Firstly, Cardoso, having got himself into an excellent position wide left plays a poor ball across the face of the goal rather than cutting in and trying a shot. Then, following up in the right-hand corner, Fernandao commits a needless foul. Grr.

7.54: Chasing the ball towards the corner flag, Pato loses his footing and slips. You could almost say that he "takes a dive". Moments later, Ronaldinho gets the half inch of space that he needs on the edge of the Inter penalty area, but pulls his shot across the goal and wide.

7.58: Inter create a good chance, with Indio suddenly appearing un-marked on the right hand side of the Barcelona penalty area, but his shot is too high. Inter are sitting deep and trying to hit Barca on the break - a tactic that may prove more successful if they commit more players forward.

8.05: First yellow card of the match to Wellington Monteiro, for booting Ronaldinho up in the air. Cue a thinly disguised snigger from just behind me in the press box.

8.06: Half-time: FC Barcelona 0-0 SC Internacional - A curious first half, all things said. Half chances for both teams, but neither goalkeeper was seriously tested. With the quality of players that are on the pitch at the moment, though, you can hardly say that it's not entertaining stuff.

8.22: Okay. Inter are back out for the second half, but Barca are nowhere to be seen. Maybe they've decided to stay in the changing rooms because it's too cold. I wouldn't blame them if they did. One change for each team - Belletti on for Zambrotta for Barca, and Fabian Vargas on for Alex for Inter.

8.27: Deco crosses for Ronaldinho, but the Alice-banded Brazilian can't quite get high enough to make contact with the ball.

8.31: Someone on the Inter coaching staff has clearly done something to upset the referee, who runs over to their bench making that "now, just CUT IT OUT" signal with his arms.

8.32: Pato shoots well over from the edge of the penalty area, but his shot flies well over. He needs to keep his shots down. Yeah. Sorry about that.

8.34: Yellow card for Puyol, who has a kick at Pato. Ceara shoots well wide for Inter. Let's be generous and say that he was off balance.

8.37: A beautiful ball over the top for Gudjohnsen, who is bundled off the ball on the edge of the Inter penalty area. Much whistling when no foul is given. Seconds later, Iniesta gets a ball in the face at a fairly fierce velocity, but he seems okay. Substitution for Barca - Xavi on for Motta. Deco tries a shot from thirty-five yards, which sails a couple of yards wide.

8.40: Substitution for Internacional. Duck off (!). Pato replaced by Luis Adriano.

8.42: I am, shall we say, surprised and disappointed to note that it has taken me 63 minutes to notice that Fabian Vargas has got a mullet. I'm clearly letting my standards slip here.

8.45. Luis Adriano has got something of the Faustino Asprilla about him, from a distance. By that, I don't mean that he's going to turn up at Darlington and pretend for a couple of weeks that he's going to play for them.

8.50: This has al gone a little bit stale. Inter are doing a pretty job of keeping Ronaldinho quiet, though. They've made their third change, too - the other Adriano is on for... Fernandao.

8.54: Two good chances for Barca in the space of a couple of minutes. A low shot well saved by Clemer, then Deco drives the ball across the six yard box looking for Gudjohnsen, but the ball is stabbed just wide by a defender.

8.59: Two things of note. Firstly, the level of excitement every time Barca get a corner is completely disproportionate to the actual threat that any of them (and they've had a few) have caused. Secondly, the Brazilian commentator behind me is almost apoplectic with excitement.

9.00: GOAL - FC Barcelona 0-1 SC Internacional: Well. Adriano is put through the middle, and calmly lifts the ball over Valdes. The entire Inter bench invades the pitch and, two minutes later, the Brazilian commentator's head seems about to explode with excitement.

9.03: Deco shoots from twenty yards and brings a magnificent one-handed save from Clemer. It doesn't look as if it's going to be their night. They've got six minutes to save it.

9.05: Ronaldinho curls a free kick inches wide of Clemer's right hand post. That would have been top corner if it had been Aboutrika.

9.07: A last throw of the dice for Barca. Gudjohnsen off for Ezquerro.

9.09: Three minutes injury time. Adriano boots the ball into a group of Inter fans. They won't be getting that ball back any time soon.

9.12: One final chance for Barca. Ronaldinho chips the ball through to Deco, who clatters into Clemer but can't get to the ball.

9.13: FULL TIME - FC Barcelona 0-1 SC Internacional: Fair play to Inter. They sat back and absorbed the Barcelona, and hit them on the break. There's no question that this was their game plan, and it worked. Whether they're really the best team in the world is seriously open to question (and it's a question that can only really be answered by FIFA opening up this competition), but they came here tonight with one thing in mind, and there's no doubt that they were successful.

The Awards Ceremony: I'll say this much: Barca could have scarcely got more excited than Inter have at winning had the result been reversed. Now, here's something that fair takes your breath away - I go off for a cigarette, and by the time I get back a complete podium has been built and Sepp Blatter is walking onto the pitch with the FIFA Anthem blaring out over the stadium PA at about 200 decibels. I think we may be supposed to stand and salute or something.

In the space of that five minutes, the stadium has also more or less emptied. There are three awards for the goal of the tournament. The bronze ball goes to Ronaldinho, the silver to Iarley, and the gold to Deco. He wins a giant key with "TOYOTA" printed on the side of it. I'm sure he's delighted. The Player Of The Tournament award goes, somewhat surprisingly to... Motta. Motta? I think I must have mis-heard this.

Internacional look thrilled to bits with their trophy. The podium, in case you were wondering, looks as if it was made by Claire's Accessories. For the third time in a row, the best club side in the world are Brazilian... and most of their best players are playing in Europe. It's frightening, if you think about it. Confetti, smoke and fireworks everywhere.

That's about it for this post. I'm off to the "mixed zone", to see if I can get a few words out of Ronaldinho on the subject of his Alice band. I'll be back shortly to give you my final thoughts on a quite extraordinary week in about an hour or so.

Just a quickie, before we get onto the serious business of the match ahead. First of all, the team news. Barca are unchanged from the team that demolished Club America on Thursday evenings, so: Valdes, Motta, Marquez, Puyol, Gudjohnsen, Giuly, Ronaldinho, Zambrotta, Van Bronckhorst, Deco, Iniesta. For Inter, Pato, The Duck, plays. Quacking news. He was excellent against Ahly the other day. Just the one change for them, so they line up as follows: Clemer, Ceara, Indio, Fabiano Eller, Wellington Monteiro, alex, Edinho, Fernandao, Iarley, Alexndre Pato, Rubens Cardoso.

While I've been typing this, six large, multi-coloured balls have been brought out onto the pitch, with one bigger one, with Earth printed on it. Suddenly, there are laser lights everywhere, and a Japanese band called The Chemistry are in front of us, all wearing coats (bar one member who is, possibly foolhardily, wearing an Inter shirt) performing "On Top Of The World", the Tournament Anthem, it says here. It's a jaunty, upbeat Europop number, as if you needed telling. In the mean time, the over-sized have been re-arranged into a distinctly phallic shape. I hope to God that they don't shoot fireworks out of the Arctic Circle, if you see what I mean. Time enough, I think, for a quick cigarette, then on with the game. Prediction? 2-0 Barcelona.

I don't know. Maybe Barca fans are just used to this sort of thing, week in week out. On this sort of showing, though, there surely can be no stopping them in the final of the World Club Cup on Sunday and, as I said below, Inter must be absolutely cacking themselves at the thought if having to line up against this lot in just three days time. Not, of course, that you'd have had the slightest inkling of any of this if you'd just got to the stadium in time for Frank Rijkaard's post-match press conference. Now, here's a man that talks a lot, and says very little. Here's a couple of sample comments for you: "Our changing room is filled with positive energy and everyone is working towards the same goal". "We have a disadvantage in the final through Inter having been out here longer than us". "We are not afraid of anyone, but Inter come from the country where football was born". You'd think that his team had just scrambled a goalless draw on a wet Sunday night in La Coruna rather than that his team had just utterly outplayed the opposition in the semi-finals of the World Club Championship. Truly, he is a master of understatement.

Let's take a look at those three quotes again. Maybe something was lost in the translation, but all of them, I think, deserve closer inspection. "Our changing room is filled with positive energy and everyone is working towards the same goal". Well, one would hope so. If you can't be positive after a 4-0 win in a cup semi-final, when can you be? The same goes for "working towards the same goal". I'm struggling to see what alternative there could be, here, unless Deco and Ronaldinho are in direct competition to see who can pull off the most outrageous piece of skill ever seen on a football pitch. "We are not afraid of anyone, but Inter come from the country where football was born". Well, for one thing, I would take issue with Brazil being the country of football's birth, obviously (point taken, Frankie, but the game was well into its adolescence before the Brazilians got completely involved), but also... "not afraid"? Really? A wealth of talent that borders on the obscene, and they're not afraid of anyone? I'd sack their psychologist if they were. Finally: "We have a disadvantage in the final through Inter having been out here longer than us". Ah, the old favourite. Making out that the other team have an enormous advantage because they've been here for forty-eight hours longer than you. An almost Ronaldinho-esque body swerve there from Frank. If they lose on Sunday... it's all the fault of jet lag! We were tired! Well, I'm not buying that. Not that I think that such an excuse will be necessary. Inter looked out of sorts last night, and I'd be unsurprised if Barca did the sort of damage to them that they did to Club America this evening.

Of course, football being football, this could all come back to bite me on the backside on Sunday night. Barca's players could all fall asleep on the pitch here through jet lag, allowing Inter a chance to at least take the match to extra-time. On the basis of what I've seen so far, though, the others should make the most of the free time between now and the final, because Sunday night seems likely to be the Ronaldinho and Deco Show.

We're in Yokohama this evening for Barcelona vs Club America. The Japanese fans are really out in force this evening, and they're all supporting Barca. It's going to be a home match for them this evening. The arrival of the Catalans in Japan has caused more excitement than I thought it might. The hacks are all here this evening, and my excitement has reached fever pitch by spotting former Anglia TV commentator Gerry Harrison sitting not ten yards away from me. I might go over and ask him whether he remembers when my junior school knitted the world's longest football scarf and paraded it on the pitch at Kenilworth Road before a match between Luton Town and West Bromwich Albion that he was covering in 1983. How could he conceivably have forgotten that?

By half-time this evening, we'll have reached the halfway point in the competition, so I thought that now would be a good time to stop and have a look back over the last few days. What have I learnt since I've been in Japan? Perhaps surprisingly, I think I've actually learnt a lot. This is obviously a very good thing. My candidacy for a post with FIFA was already strong, but I feel that I'm at the point now of being able to launch an almost completely watertight case for a place amongst the game's great and good. So, let's have a look back and see what I've learnt.

1. Playing matches in a stadium with the roof on it when it's half empty is a really bad idea. Everything echoes too much, and it ends up sounding like it's being played in a car park. I'm not a fan of keeping the roof on ever, but this is really beyond the pale.

2. The current format of the World Club Cup is flawed. Sorry, but there is just so much room for improvement here. Even if it was two groups of three with the Europeans and South Americans playing as group seeds, this would be better than what we have now.

3. The music that is played while the teams line up before kick-off is terrible. Awful. FIFA should have it's own anthem, with words and everything that everyone has to sing before these matches. Something like "God Save The Sepp", perhaps. Or "The Star Spangled Blatter".

4. There aren't as many "duck" puns as I had originally thought there would be. I've got three days left to think of some more, and I can't help but think that I've already used by best ones.

5. Japanese fans care about the Premiership and nothing else. On Saturday night, I sat up and watched the Manchester derby and Liverpool vs Fulham. Not even the most cursory of glances was made towards the Football League. The Japanese must wonder where the promoted sides come from.

6. Gerry Harrison is much, much taller than I thought he would be.

7. No-one wants press conferences. The managers and coaches don't, and respond by spouting out the most banal things that they can think of. The press aren't interested in what they have to say, and often don't even ask questions at all (sample "question" from the press conference after last night's match between Internacional and Ahly SC to the Ahly coach from an Egyptian journalist: "You presented Egyptian football very well. We are very proud of you.".

8. Whether this competition is a success or not will be judged almost entirely on whether Ronaldinho plays. Some of the people around here are so excited that they're almost weeing themselves.

9. The Brazilian fans are complete and utter mentalists. Their almost deranged devotion to their club is almost infectious. They are, on their own, worth the admission fee. And they are all massively, massively drunk.

10. The "smaller" clubs are massively unhappy with the format of this tournament. Here are the Ahly SC coach's thoughts on the matter from after last night's match: "The competition is not fair, giving a seeded place to the Brazilian team. Maybe we have to have a fairer system. Maybe it is always set so that the European and American teams get to the final. It would be more interesting if everyone was drawn equally, and would be fairer to the other continents. It is important, though, for the organisers to think of the money."." Harsh words.

Right then. There's just over an hour to kick-off this evening and, due to the fact that we apparently have internet connections at our desks inside the stadium this evening, I'm planning a live commentary from inside the bowels of the Nissan Stadium here in Yokohama. It would be lovely to see you there. Otherwise, my noodlings will be up here later on.