kashima antlers
at the end of this season, when you finally are sober enough to think about all that has gone wrong this season, look east. look at japan. at a team called kashima antlers.
a 13-game winning streak last season saw them overhaul urawa reds to be crowned j-league champions. they went on to win the nabisco cup, japan's equivalent of the fa cup. and although they lost the season opener, the xerox cup, it was under extremely dubious officiating. then the j-league started proper. 4-0 over consadole, 2-0 over tokyo, 9-1 over krung thai bank in the acl, 6-0 over nam dinh in the acl.
and after the 6-0 win, the coach talked about taking one match at a time, masashi motoyama talked about the challenges ahead, uchida apologised for a poor performance(he only had two assists).
nobody talked about winning the double. nobody talked about how good they were.
i watched the highlights: they hardly celebrated when they scored. in fact, they were supposedly annoyed that they didnt dominate the vietnamese champions more thoroughly.
you can say that they haven't played the traditionally stronger teams like gamba and urawa, which curiously have made indifferent starts to the season, but shouldn't you be beating a weak team 5-0 then? so what's wrong with beating a weaker team 6-0?
they never stop running and scoring because they know there is always more they can give, because they can never be good enough. because they want to totally destroy the opponents.
that hunger, that desire, that humility.
we forgot these.
a 13-game winning streak last season saw them overhaul urawa reds to be crowned j-league champions. they went on to win the nabisco cup, japan's equivalent of the fa cup. and although they lost the season opener, the xerox cup, it was under extremely dubious officiating. then the j-league started proper. 4-0 over consadole, 2-0 over tokyo, 9-1 over krung thai bank in the acl, 6-0 over nam dinh in the acl.
and after the 6-0 win, the coach talked about taking one match at a time, masashi motoyama talked about the challenges ahead, uchida apologised for a poor performance(he only had two assists).
nobody talked about winning the double. nobody talked about how good they were.
i watched the highlights: they hardly celebrated when they scored. in fact, they were supposedly annoyed that they didnt dominate the vietnamese champions more thoroughly.
you can say that they haven't played the traditionally stronger teams like gamba and urawa, which curiously have made indifferent starts to the season, but shouldn't you be beating a weak team 5-0 then? so what's wrong with beating a weaker team 6-0?
they never stop running and scoring because they know there is always more they can give, because they can never be good enough. because they want to totally destroy the opponents.
that hunger, that desire, that humility.
we forgot these.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home