Saturday 9th July 2011 ko 7.00pm

J-League Divsion One

VISSEL KOBE 0

NAGOYA GRAMPUS 1 (N Nakamura 84)

Att 17,568

Entry & Programme  2,500 yen

Towel Scarf 1,500 yen

Badge 760 yen

After a happy day’s sightseeing in Kobe, I took the subway out to the suburbs to the Home’s Stadium (and yes the apostrophe is in the correct place!). The ground used to be called the Wings stadium during its stint as a World Cup venue, as the extended stands behind each goal stuck out from the curved stands. Since then they’ve been truncated to allow a retractable roof and air conditioning to be installed.

It was slightly daunting getting a ticket as everyone seemed to be in queue for something! There seemed to be a wide disparity between the cheapest and most expensive seats, so I did the simple thing and bought a cheap ticket for behind the goal, in the home end. It was obvious even at this early stage that there was no possibility of any trouble. In fact both sets of fans were happily mingling, sat together eating something from the wide range of cuisine on offer.

I headed round to the home end, and discovered not only were the programmes free, you could take as many as you wanted! Since the seats were not reserved I found a reasonable seat and discovered a paper banner as the fans were to do a mass display when the teams came out. It had the words to most of the chants on the back. The lyrics were in Japanese,  but thoughtfully the tune to sing it to was printed in english! That revealed that one song would be to the tune, “River Kwai March!”

And this will be my abiding memory of football in Japan. Friendly, courteous clubs and fans, but once the game starts, the fans go bananas! Cheerleaders with megaphones whip the fans up into a frenzy. But for all of that, its always positive, and at the end of the match, they cheer the team, win or lose. After that tidy up the litter, fold up the flags and quietly go home.

And on this occasion the Vissel fans had plenty to complain about. They could and should have won this easily. However they conspired to miss chance after chance, and were made to pay when Naoshi Nakumura’s 25 yard dipping volley stunned the crowd. It was all a little too late for Vissel ( an amalgam of Vessel for Victory by the way) and it all ended rather tamely. The Nagoya fans (the Eight bit has been dropped, but it remains on the badge), went wide, for it was a great victory for them.