* Not actually a shop

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Gas Talk Special: JSoccer Magazine's Alan Gibson

At the end of November I wrote about the first two issues of JSoccer Magazine, and to coincide with the release of Issue 3, it was my absolute pleasure to welcome the man behind the magazine, Alan Gibson, to Gas Talk.

Recorded via Skype on Saturday morning, this 47 minute podcast covers:
  • Alan's time in Japan and the story behind the creation of the magazine
  • Highlights of the first three issues (including a Special Offer for Gas Talk listeners at around 21 minutes in)
  • The upcoming J1 season, discussing Yasuyuki Konno's move to Gamba, Kazuma Watanabe's move to FC Tokyo, Kashiwa as defending champions, Nagoya, Shimizu and much more.
  • How Cerezo Osaka fared in 2011 and what lessons FC Tokyo can learn for our maiden A.C.L. campaign
You can listen below, download the mp3 by clicking on the Gas Talk logo on the right, or listen through iTunes (search 'Gas Talk' to subscribe).


The cover of Issue 3
You can purchase your copy of Issue 3 by emailling Alan at alan@jsoccer.com (in Japan) or through this link (international).

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Konno Gone But Two More In

Yesterday was a bittersweet day for FC Tokyo supporters, with the club finally announcing the worst kept secret in Japanese football - that club captain Yasuyuki Konno would be joining Gamba Osaka. We knew the day was coming when the best player in our club's history would depart, with rumours swirling for the best part of a month, but the actual announcement, bringing to an end Konno's eight year spell at the club, was still hard to take.

But every dark cloud has a silver lining, so they say, and earlier in the day there were a couple of pieces of good news from the club, with two more quality young players, Kosuke Ota from Shimizu and Hiroki Kawano from Verdy, signing on, and both are likely to play a big part in our first season back in J1 and our first-ever Asian Champions League campaign.

Furthermore, rumours are circulating today that the transfer fee for Konno, reportedly of around 100 million yen, is roughly what we spent to acquire not only Ota and Kawano, but also Kazuma Watanabe and Aria Jasuru Hasegawa from Yokohama along with Kenichi Kaga of Iwata, meaning the club have handled their offseason business superbly, with just the issue of a fourth foreign player, if one is to arrive, to be settled.

In Nine Months of Job Done - Part 3 - posted a week ago - I listed all the ins and outs from this already hectic close season, but the additions of fullback Ota and forward/winger Kawano look to be as important, if not more so, than Kaga and Watanabe coming on board.

Ota arrives after three seasons with Shimizu, during which time he forced his way into the national team reckoning, playing once for Japan but seeing his opportunities limited by the crowded competition at fullback. He was part of the 2007 Under 20 World Cup squad, where he was a teammate of our future captain Masato Morishige (yes, I'm going to keep calling him that until it comes true), and became an almost ever-present in the S-Pulse backline the past two seasons, making 28 appearances in 2010 and 33 starts last year.
'Kosuke, Kosuke Ooooota,
goes down the wing for me,
do do do do do,
do do do do do'

His departure was not well received in the orange half of Shizuoka though, as after the 24 year old angled for a move abroad but it came to nothing he commented as recently as two weeks ago that he wouldn't sign for another J.League team, yet here he is now, having jumped on board Ranko Popovic's Sausage Spaceship of Glory.*

But while it stinks for them his arrival is great news for us, and gives us a naturally left sided fullback to take the spot of Kenta Mukuhara, who, while he is a fan favourite, will return to backup duty. We now boast arguably the best pair of fullbacks in the league with Ota on the left and Yuhei Tokunaga on the right, and that ensures that even without Konno, the defensive group will remain a strength of the team.

Kawano, just 21, is another left footer, and he joins a crowded group of second strikers/wingers that includes, among others, Naotake Hanyu, Sotan Tanabe, Tatsuya Yazawa, Yohei Otake and, of course, Naohiro Ishikawa. After a good, long scrub to get all that green off him I expect Kawano to leap towards the head of that queue (though those names weren't in order of course) and stake a claim for the left midfield spot in our first XI in the preseason, and he's become the signing I'm most excited to see in red and blue.

Versatile enough to play out on the flank or behind a target man, and with pace and a bag of tricks to match, the wee man is the sort of player we've been lacking on the left, someone who can get by his man and deliver a decent ball into the box for the likes of Lucas, Sota Hirayama and Watanabe to attack.

"This would be a lot better if there was
more than 2,000 people here..."
We had a good look at him in both the derbies in 2011, and if Takumi Abe were still around he could tell you how good Kawano is, as the former Verdy number 7 gave our rookie left back the run around for 90 minutes back in May, and then after coming on at halftime in the 'Battle of Tokyo' at the end of October he 'assisted' on Morishige's own goal that saw them earn a point.

His place in the team could/should come at the expense of another supporter's favourite, Yazawa, but of course in this most testing of seasons there'll be games for everyone and plenty more daft goal celebrations from Yaza.

Writing all of this was designed to help me get over Konno's departure, and now that I'm done I'm pretty sure I'm going to get Kawano's name on my new A.C.L. kit. Mission accomplished then!

P.S. Casual is going off to Spain to train with Bundesliga side Dusseldorf. Who knows how that will turn out.


* Copyright 2012 : On the Gas

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Nine Months of Job Done - Part 3

All aboard the good ship Popovic!!!
Our Emperor's Cup win on New Year's Day has made the title of this series seem totally insufficient, as rather than just achieving the expected minimum of promotion back to J1, the team were simply brilliant throughout our run to Tennōhai glory, and as a consequence 2012 shapes as arguably the most exciting year in our club's history (with a massive caveat, that I'll get to).

Here in Part 3 we'll look ahead to what we can expect in J1 and the Asian Champions League this year, and run through a long list of already-confirmed and rumoured personnel changes and how they'll impact new manager Ranko Popovic's preseason preparations. Its under two months until the Super Cup, so lets get started!

J1 & A.C.L.
Back To J1
We return to the top flight with our tails between our legs, but also with a definite momentum from the Cup win, and with the new gaffer coming in the players will be forced to prove themselves all over again in the preseason, with the possibility/likelihood we'll set up completely differently than under Mr. Okuma in the Super Cup on March 3rd.

Until last season we'd almost always been a 4-4-2 side, and with Sota Hirayama returning from injury and Kazuma Watanabe coming on board the pressure will be on Mr. Popovic to play two up front, and the competition for places in attack should be a feature of the preseason, with Lucas and The Salad still around and Kentaro Shigematsu returning following his loan season at Fukuoka. That change in formation (if it comes) threatens to marginalize Naotake Hanyu, and the best Roswell can hope for is a start here and there in the ACL if we do indeed go back to 4-4-2. There are other positional battles to watch before March 3rd, but we'll come back to those in later posts. To the league itself...

Despite the presence of Nagoya and Gamba in the top three its a much-changed J1 we're coming back to, with Kashiwa the defending champions after one of the best title races in league history in 2011. The success of the Sun Kings is the benchmark that we'll try and match, as their run to the title the season after winning J2 was astounding, incredible and several other adjectives... BUT NOT unbelievable, as they simply went a couple of steps further than promoted teams the two previous seasons...
  • In 2008 Hiroshima won J2, in 2009 they finished 4th in J1
  • In 2009 Cerezo finished 2nd in J2, in 2010 they finished 3rd in J1 (And Qualified for the A.C.L.)
The pattern only goes back three seasons, and the three years before it began the J2 Champion was always relegated right back to the second division the next year ('07 Sapporo, '06 Yokohama FC, '05 Kyoto), but recent history suggests one of either us, Tosu or Sapporo will be making waves in the top half of the table this season, and despite my natural pessimism its likely to be us, isn't it?! (Mmm... Is this starting to feel a lot like Three Down, One Up? to you?...)

But it wasn't only at the very top where things changed in J1 in 2011, as our two nearest relegation rivals in '10, Kobe and Sendai, made strides up the table, Kobe to 9th and Sendai all the way up to 4th, while our Tamagawa Classico rivals Kawasaki and the above-mentioned Cerezo plummeted down the league, Kawasaki from 5th down to 11th, with the pink side of Osaka slipping even further, from 3rd down to 12th.

And while we're on Cerezo, its here I'd like to return to the 'massive caveat' I referenced in the opening paragraph. It applies to Kashiwa as well, though perhaps not as much, and with Cerezo finishing 12th in their first ACL season the warning signs are flickering in the distance...

How will our exertions in the ACL affect our J1 Campaign?
Naturally we're all buzzing about qualifying for the Asian Champions League, with supporters already planning their trips to Brisbane, Beijing and Ulsan, but the priority for the club has got to be preserving our J1 status, and how Mr. Popovic manages the squad, particularly on those away trips, will be vital and also very interesting to watch.

While we'd like to go as far as we can in the competition, and if I had to predict how Group F would go now I'd guess we'll be battling for second spot with Brisbane (I expect Ulsan to win it), we'll have to be careful of overtaxing our best players, and therefore we should see much more of the whole squad than we did in 2011.

I expect Masato Morishige and the rest of the defence to play almost all of the games in both competitions, fitness permitting, but further up the pitch I'd hope to see more rotation than Big Bear employed, with the first XI preserved for the league and players likely to be J1 bench regulars, again, fitness permitting, like Sotan Tanabe, Hanyu, Hirayama and perhaps Shigematsu to get opportunities in Asia.

I saw a very interesting tweet from ntoshi05 that showed we could play completely different XIs in the league and ACL, but while I wouldn't go that far we do have enough depth to field a strong team on a Wednesday night in China while keeping our powder dry for a weekend league game.

The example of Cerezo though, who progressed the furthest of the Japanese sides in the 2011 ACL but finished by far the lowest of the four in the J1 table is a cautionary tale that we'll need to be careful not to replicate.

The Squad
Ins & Outs
We're only 10 days into the offseason but the club have been very busy sorting out the squad for 2012, with one massive 'Out' still to be confirmed (and hopefully a big 'In' on the way).

Sayonara/OUT
CONFIRMED:
Jade North (full transfer to Sapporo)
Tatsuya Suzuki (full transfer to Tokushima TOOT TOOT on my whistle!!!)
Tomokazu Nagira (full transfer to Tottori)
Daisuke Sakata (full transfer to Fukuoka)
Kazumasa Uesato (back to Sapporo - loan expired (then shipped off to Tokushima on loan!))
Daiki Takamatsu (back to Oita - loan expired)
Genki Nagasato (back to Kofu - loan expired)
Kota Morimura (full transfer to Kitakyushu)
Toshihiro Matsushita (spent 2011 on loan with Sendai and has now completed full transfer TOOT!)

RUMOURED:
Yasuyuki Konno (Gamba)

ON LOAN:
Takumi Abe (will spend 2012 with Yokohama FC)
Ryo Hiraide (will spend 2012 with Toyama)
--------
Yokoso/IN
CONFIRMED:
Kenichi Kaga (defender from Iwata)
Kazuma Watanabe (forward from Yokohama)
Aria Jasuru Hasegawa (midfielder from Yokohama)
Yuichi Maruyama (defender from Meiji University)
Jang Hyun-Soo (defender from Yonsei University, South Korea)
Yohei Hayashi (forward from Chuo University)

RETURNING FROM LOAN:
Yohei Otake (5 appearances for Cerezo from August to December)
Kentaro Shigematsu (25 appearances and two goals for Fukuoka)
Shuto Kono (18 appearances for Oita on full season loan)

Thats at least 10 Outs (and 2 on loan), but only one of them was a regular, important player for us in 2011. And that is obviously Konno, but we've already wasted enough breath hoping he'll stay so lets just get it announced so we can move on with our lives. The man to take his spot is Kaga, who played 30 times for Iwata last season and has made over 120 J1 appearances at the age of 28, although Maruyama and Jang are very interesting prospects and could push for the second central defensive spot alongside (hopefully) our next captain, Morishige.

Of the other Ins the most intriguing is Watanabe - he's bagged 28 goals in his three J1 seasons - but the feeling by the bay is that he didn't really kick-on since his excellent 2009, when he scored 13 times and beat out Takuji Yonemoto for the Best New Player Award. Last season he notched seven goals but they all came in the first half of season, and he fell out of favour, starting just three of the last 13 games. He comes over with a clean slate and with his Kunimi High School chums Hirayama and Hokuto to keep him company, so hopefully Mr. Popovic can get the best out of him.

With Jang taking Jade's spot as our AFC foreign player we still have one non-Asian foreign player slot to fill, and if the club do bring someone in (and we've got the cash to do it) I hope they target a playmaking centre mid, someone who can provide competition to Casual and get us playing at a quicker tempo alongside either Yonemoto or Hideto Takahashi. Watch this space.

OK then, THAT'S IT! Nine Months of Job Done is a wrap, we can now look forward to what should be a belter of a 2012 for our Gasmen. Thanks for reading this series, I hope you've enjoyed it, and keep checking back throughout the preseason for FC Tokyo news, views and opinion with no punches pulled!

Roll on March 3rd! Up the Gas!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Gas Talk Emperor's Cup Special

A Happy New Year to all FC Tokyo supporters, On the Gas readers and Gas Talk listeners. 今年も宜しくお願いします!

It was a very happy new year for us with our Emperor's Cup triumph the perfect way to kick off 2012, and Dan & I couldn't let arguably the club's finest day pass without a special Gas Talk to commemorate it. But as there have also been several personnel changes in the first three days of the offseason we had plenty of other ground to cover, while we took the opportunity to look ahead a little to our Asian Champions League debut, and Dan was able to break some news 'live' on the pod (that you all already know by now!).

The rundown (just under 45 minutes)
  • Intro and Emperor's Cup Review (first 15 mins)
  • Early Personnel Moves including Konno, North & Popovic (to 36 mins)
  • A.C.L. & Outro (to end)


You can listen on the player above, download the mp3 yourself by clicking on the Gas Talk logo to the right, or receive it automatically if you subscribe on iTunes (search "Gas Talk"). Enjoy.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Emperor's Cup Champions!

Kyoto 2 - 4 FC Tokyo
Thanks to Dan for this pic from the pitch!
FC Tokyo romped to the club's first-ever Emperor's Cup today with a 4-2 win over Kyoto at the National Stadium.

After falling behind to a 13th minute strike from Hiroki Nakayama, The Gasmen equalized with a header from captain Yasuyuki Konno two minutes later, and took the lead for good thanks to a 30 yard thunderbolt from Masato Morishige in the 36th minute. Three minutes before halftime Lucas showed great composure to fire past the advancing Kyoto 'keeper for 3-1, a lead we took to the sheds for oranges. Then 21 minutes into the second half the big Brazilian settled matters with another smart finish, this time taking Kenta Mukuhara's first-time layoff and dinking the ball over the keeper.

Impressive Kyoto youngster Yuya Kubo brought it back to 4-2 with a 71st minute header, but that was all Kyoto could muster, and The Gasmen played out time fairly comfortably to spark huge celebrations at the final whistle, with the club securing its first-ever Emperor's Cup, a wonderful way for manager Kiyoshi Okuma to leave his role before he moves upstairs.

The win also means The Gasmen have qualified to play in Asia's premier club tournament, the Asian Champions League, for the first time in 2012, and as Emperor's Cup winners we have been placed in Group F, with Brisbane, Ulsan and Beijing.