Barry writes:S-Pulse 5-0 Shonan Bellmare
Ono 45(+13)
Johnsen 57
Fujimoto 64
Okazaki 82, 88
Att. 16204
Line Up
GK Nishibe
DF Ichikawa
DF Hiraoka
DF Bosnar
DF Ota
MF Hyodo
MF Honda
MF Ono
FW Okazaki
FW Johnsen
FW Fujimoto
Subs Used
Iwashita on for Bosnar (45)
Ito T. on for Ono (69)
Omae on for Hyodo (83)
Report
It's a bit different to England. The honour of being the ones to put the final nail in a team's relegation coffin is something you enjoy every moment of. You rub their noses in it over the course of the 90 minutes, and afterwards revel in the footage of their fans crying on the terraces. That's not exactly what happened today as we put our total against Shonan for the season to 11, at the same time ensuring they are down and out with four games still to play.
Before
AfterWe weren't great, but Shonan are bottom of the table with 16 points for a reason. After sending them back to J2 after just one year back in the top flight what did we do? Why, we sang their team's name. Then they sang ours. Then all the women in the crowd burst into tears at the touchingness of it all. Yep, it's not quite the same as back home.
The first half was pretty uninspiring truth be told, with the most interesting thing being Nishibe breaking the goal. He stopped a corner going straight in, but wasn't able to stop himself tumbling into the side netting, pulling down a stanchion with him. It took a while, but the goal was fixed and play restarted. Rather than the clock stopping as you might expect, the interruption was added on as stoppage time. Hence Ono latching onto a perfect pass by Jungo to smash the ball home - in the 57th minute of the first half. It took the roof off the stadium, and changed the game.
The first half was pretty uninspiring truth be told, with the most interesting thing being Nishibe breaking the goal. He stopped a corner going straight in, but wasn't able to stop himself tumbling into the side netting, pulling down a stanchion with him. It took a while, but the goal was fixed and play restarted. Rather than the clock stopping as you might expect, the interruption was added on as stoppage time. Hence Ono latching onto a perfect pass by Jungo to smash the ball home - in the 57th minute of the first half. It took the roof off the stadium, and changed the game.
A 57th minute first half goal? This was the reasonUp until half time we'd not really troubled the Shonan goal, but in the second half Bellmare's pretty clueless play was finally made to pay. Johnsen bagged a first goal for a while, and not long after the Ref went momentarily mad and awarded the softest penalty I've ever seen. Not only was Okazaki not fouled (merely made contact with a Shonan defender), but when he finally lost his footing (it wasn't a dive) he was a good foot or two outside the box.
Well, whatever. It made no difference. Shonan didn't get relegated on a dodgy penalty. They've been poor all season. After that, apart from one very good save from Nishibe, it was all S-Pulse, and Okazaki bagged a brace to take his total up to 13 for the year so far. Four games to go. Can we make an ACL position? Probably not, but that's not going to stop me and my UKU buddies hitting Sendai for a weekend of football, booze, scarf twirling and arm waving S-Pulse style!
¡Olé olé, olé olé!
Videos
Full highlights:
