and so, the J-League comes to its conclusion. not without the drama which so characterised it this season. Gamba nicked it in INJURY TIME, can you believe it! and so it ended with Gamba on 60 points, Urawa, Kashima, JEF and Cerezo, all on 59 points. What a hell of a ride.
Though we didnt win it(Kashima Antlers), reading the report of our 4-0 victory at home, over Kashiwa Reysol, i felt a sense of pride surging in me. At least we capped it off with a fantastic win, and it sort of made up for our slip-up which blew the title race open a while back(we had a seemingly-unassailable lead then). But perhaps, the most emotional moment was this:
In Kashima, as time ran down and it became apparent that the Antlers could no longer hope to give Toninho Cerezo a final title as a sending-off present, the fans were nevertheless given a chance to roar with pride. Late in the match, as Kashima won a penalty kick which promised to give the home team an unshakeable 4-0 lead, Toninho Cerezo called to the bench and sent in 36-year-old Yasuto Honda -- the grand old man of the Antlers -- to take the PK. As the crowd sang in celebration, Honda drilled the shot and claimed what will almost surely be the final goal of his long and illustrious career.
Maybe that is the beauty of football.
And it makes you salute those One-Club-Men, like Fran of Deportivo, Maldini of Milan, and so on...
Though we didnt win it(Kashima Antlers), reading the report of our 4-0 victory at home, over Kashiwa Reysol, i felt a sense of pride surging in me. At least we capped it off with a fantastic win, and it sort of made up for our slip-up which blew the title race open a while back(we had a seemingly-unassailable lead then). But perhaps, the most emotional moment was this:
In Kashima, as time ran down and it became apparent that the Antlers could no longer hope to give Toninho Cerezo a final title as a sending-off present, the fans were nevertheless given a chance to roar with pride. Late in the match, as Kashima won a penalty kick which promised to give the home team an unshakeable 4-0 lead, Toninho Cerezo called to the bench and sent in 36-year-old Yasuto Honda -- the grand old man of the Antlers -- to take the PK. As the crowd sang in celebration, Honda drilled the shot and claimed what will almost surely be the final goal of his long and illustrious career.
Maybe that is the beauty of football.
And it makes you salute those One-Club-Men, like Fran of Deportivo, Maldini of Milan, and so on...
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