Dire Straits in the Heart of Osaka

Yes, the flaming pink flamingos of Cerezo looked pretty dire last night as they crashed to a 1-2 defeat to TheSpa Kusatsu at Nagai Stadium. This loss sees Cerezo surrender second spot in J2 to Yamagata Montedio again, on goal difference, and revealed that they are simply not ready for a return to top league yet.

Cerezo Osaka
Takashi Aizawa
Ryuhei Niwa, Tatsuya Yamashita, Kenji Haneda, Hiroyuki Omata
Ale, Geremano, Shinji Kagawa
Kento Shiratani (Yasuhito Morishima 52), Yoichiro Kakitani (Noriyuki Sakemoto 70), Rui Komatsu
Scorer: Komatsu 85

Thespa Kusatsu
Seiji Honda
Sung Yong Choi, Seung Jin Bae, Jun Tanaka, Yasushi Kita, Takeshi Terda
Yuki Matsushita (Tadahiro Akiba 66), Shingo Kumabayashi, Yusuke Shimada
Ryo Goto (Wataru Yamazaki 72), Yasunori Takada
Scorers: Shimada 30, Tanaka 47

Cerezo Pete and I went to see Cerezo vs Thespa last night, and it was not a pretty sight. Both teams were awful, and found it hard to pass to their own team mates if put under any kind of pressure at all, but Kusatsu were worthy winners due to their more lively approach. It is hard to see Cerezo justifying a return to J1 based on this performance, which was even worse than their unconvincing victories over Gifu and Kumamoto earlier in the season. Even Geremano, who had looked Osaka's best player in the pervious games could not make any impression, and as for Ale, the Brazilian embassy should revoke his passport before he does any more damage to their country's reputation.

Currently playing in iTunes: Money For Nothing by Dire Straits :-)