Tokyo Verdy - J-League

steaua_bukkake

Great atmosphere for the first game for the newly formed Verdy Foreigners Firm. Got to the match 15 minutes late due to the ground being a long bloody walk from the station. Once we got to the ground realised we were in the opposite stand so had to walk round, but were able to walk inside the top tier which was great for soaking up the noise and spectacle of it all. Turns out we'd bought tickets in the boys pen, lots of Dads, lads, Grandads and MILFS scattered around, with the Verdy youth team 8 rows behind us. Cornered the Beer girl as we took up our seats and got ourselves holed-up with 9 cans of Suntory Malts, possibly the worst beer in Japan, but no one seemed bothered, we were after all drinking beers in our seats, a strange but welcomed concept.

The game - Verdy were all over them the 1st half, playing some nice attacking play with plenty of passing on the floor, looks like the midfield can play a bit, apart from the right winger, he was shit, always delivering the cross into row-Z of the away end.

Our number 9, Hulk, had a good first half and scored in the 36th minute with a beautiful free-kick, 1-nil Verdy.

At this point a strange thing happened, we stopped talking about the team in terms of, 'they' and started talk about them in terms of, 'we'. Everyone noticed it and mentioned the change in our attachment to this surrogate team. From then on in it was all 'we' and 'us', and we began to hate the opposition with a passion, FC Tokyo.. The scummers!!!

Anyway, 2nd half was shit, we got tired, they equalized, we tried to hang on, lost more energy and they scored in the final minute.. Our hearts sank, but something good had come of it, we were 9 lads from the UK, reconnected with that feeling, the feeling of getting up on match day, an afternoon of analysing, drinking, swearing, spitting and shouting. To be honest it felt nearly as good as watching Leeds.

Post match - We headed up the station, mingling with the Tokyo FC lot, as we walked along we started our own chants based on English football songs, Come on Verdy, You're Just The Man U of Tokyo, We Love You Verdy, etc... As you can imagine we got some very funny looks from both camps. We holed up outside a 7/11 and bought a case of ale, this time Asahis and carried on with our chants, to the amazement and amusement of the locals. Then we saw them, a group of gaijin (non-japanese) supporters dressed in blue and red, Tokyo FC, scummers. The chants got louder and we even threw in a, "Where's your Nova gone?" Nova being an high-street English school/teaching company which had famously gone bust and left loads of teachers stranded with no pay and no digs, working at Nova was one up from from being a drug-dealing and one down from being a recruiter [sorry albert herbert hawkins]. We continued chanting into the station and back into Shinjuku for a few wets..

A good day out, shit result, but we've all brought that match-day feeling back in our lives and feel much better for it.

Hopefully our little Tokyo firm will go from strength to strength...

Cold Lamb and Dog Wanking flags at the ready for the next game...